brainofck

Hmmm, most of the grad school people I've hung out with have been Astronomy (so science fiction) or Library Science (so mysteries or science fiction). Heh! I'm not seeing either of the guys doing that, though Daniel has probably read the real classics (Asimov, Christie, etc.) at some point. Okay, maybe Daniel might have a Dorothy L. Sayers mystery at the beach ...

I am totally picturing Daniel with excellent feminist contemporary fiction. I have no doubt that the Anthropology Department of whatever universities he was at were being influenced by postmodernism and Women's Studies, and these books would be sort of ... around:

Jeanette Winterson's The Passion (1987)
Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook (1962, classic)
Margaret Atwood's Surfacing (1972, classic), The Handmaid's Tale (1985) <-- definitely THT!
Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987)
Maybe some Virginia Woolf, like Orlando, if he's dipping into the classics.

I think he'd also like Gore Vidal's brilliant and intensely researched historical fiction set in the classical world, like Creation (1981) and Julian (1964).

Jack? Besides Mad Magazine? ;-) It's stereotypical, but I picture him with the latest Robert Ludlum or other popular spy/thriller story. In-one-eyeball-and-out-the-other toss-away paperbacks. He has better books at home, and he's read them all, but the beach is purely for vacationing, including his brain.

Prompt? Crack! I want crack! Involving penguins.

For Daniel:

Bocaccio/The Decameron
Marguerite Yourcenar/Memoirs of Hadrian
Djuna Barnes/Nightwood
Rimbaud/poetry (in this (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226719731/sr=1-14/qid=1212167756/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1212167756&sr=1-14&seller=) bilingual edition)
Patrick White/A Fringe of Leaves (or any other novel of his)
Grimmelshausen/The Adventurous Simplicissimus (1668 German classic set during the Thirty Years War; funny and macabre. Maybe he would have read it in English translation rather than the original German since it was summer, after all.)
Mircea Eliade/A History of Religious Ideas (all three vols *g*; covers every religion from ancient to modern times in the whole wide world. This would just have been published right there on campus (assuming you're placing Daniel at the University of Chicago), at the U of Chicago Press, and is by a Chicago prof. It made a big splash at the time and is still a classic.)
Georges Dumezil/From Myth to Fiction (nice companion to the Eliade and cited often in those books; Daniel definitely would have picked this up if he'd read those. Talks about how stories that a culture tells about itself arise and are transformed, and how to tease apart history and fiction in ancient - or at least very old - sagas. I can imagine Daniel having been quite influenced by this. Also pubbed (in English translation from the French) by Chicago and would have been readily available at any of the used bookstores a few blocks from campus)


For Jack:

I agree with green_grrl about the action/adventure, spy/thriller genre. I could also see him reading a big, thick classic novel, as long as it was juicy and a page-turner. Maybe also contemporary history books, particularly war and foreign policy histories. And maybe some wacky "written while under the influence" '60s/'70s stuff. And, hmmm, maybe novels set in Latin America (since he speaks Spanish and may still have an interest in the region).

John Le Carré/The Little Drummer Girl or any others by him
Joseph Conrad/Heart of Darkness
Jared Diamond/Guns, Germs and Steel
Mark Bowden/Black Hawk Down
any of the many books on World War II, the Vietnam War, and the more recent conflicts (depending on when you're setting the story)
Hunter Thompson/Screwjack
Thomas Pynchon/The Crying of Lot 49
Gabriel Garcia Marquez/One Hundred Years of Solitude

This was fun. :-)

For a prompt, what do you think about a second installment of the wing!fic?