I still remember the night thirty years ago when I first read "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." After finishing it, I lay still for what seemed like hours, flattened, staggered. The story expresses the human condition so fully that I almost felt there was nothing more left to write. I would certainly recommend starting O'Connor with this book. I also inhaled her letters, published as "The Habit of Being." They are as vivid a portrait of a life steeped in letters as one could hope to read. Like so much of her work, they are sharp, hilarious, fierce, and deeply courageous.

"Huckleberry Finn" is a masterwork, not only among Twain's books but in American and even world fiction. I would start with Huck and work back to "Tom Sawyer."

I loved "Headlong," which is very funny and clever. Frayn is so various--good in so many different ways--it's hard to say where to start. If you have even the mildest interest in the fine arts, though, "Headlong" is at least one good place.

Trollope is such an amazing writer. You certainly want to start right, because you will miss a lot if you don't. There are quite a few wrong places to start. The Barchester novels have never appealed to me at all (surely a matter of taste, as people do love them). I don't think you can go wrong with the Palliser novels. The first one is "Can You Forgive Her?" Chronologically, that's a sensible place to start--but I think "Phineas Finn" and "The Eustace Diamonds," which come later in the series, are better books. Perhaps one should sidestep the whole series question and start with "The Way We Live Now," a really masterful novel. For my money, Trollope's women are a hundred times more interesting than the women in Dickens. His ideas of a woman's place are--well, outmoded, at the least--but his understanding of the socioeconomic pressures on women in his time is superb. He also writes with amazing persuasiveness about how people accumulate power in government--read "Phineas Finn" for that. Terrific writer, don't miss him.

"Vanity Fair" is the obvious place to start--a rich, delightful, funny and occasionally very telling masterpiece. But don't miss "Henry Esmond." Most people do miss it, but it's a terrific book.

Definitely read "Agnes Grey" first. It is a better book.

Margery Allingham was a wonderful, sharp, clever writer of classic English mysteries. I'm not sure if any of her books are even in print in the US, but they should be.

I had a college prof once who said (after asking the class what Dickens we had read and hearing very few titles), "Oh, God, I wish I had all of Dickens to read again!" I think of that often, because I also came to love Dickens. Among good possible starts, I would recommend "Great Expectations," "David Copperfield" and maybe "Our Mutual Friend." I think "Little Dorrit" is also wonderful and I think "Dombey and Son" is often unfairly overlooked. These all have wonderful plots and terrific characters. I was made to start with "Oliver Twist" in seventh grade, presumably because the hero was a child near our age. But I don't think this is a good starting place--in fact, I recently tried to reread it and still couldn't get into it. And I certainly wouldn't recommend "The Pickwick Papers" (another frequent introduction) to any but committed Dickens readers. I reread "Bleak House" recently and loved it all over again, but it's probably better read once you've soaked up a few others.

I want to like Oz more than I actually like him. I feel I should--but I don't. Anyone have a recommendation for a book that might get me into him?