Plunkett of Tammany Hall. Although now I come to think about it, I'm not sure when it was published.

ETA - especially with you being newly in New York, I highly recommend this. A fabulous look at NY machine politics, and funny as hell.

Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, a Mexican nun, wrote some incredible stuff in the 1600s, but I don't think it was available in English until recently, so I don't know what that means in terms of copyright.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by the unknown Bronte, Anne, is also excellent.

Seconding Connie on Wilkie Collins. Also fun sometimes to pick up things like Ivanhoe that everyone knows but nobody's actually read.

Bugger. Winnie the Pooh was published in 1926. Oh well, I'm choosing it anyway.

I'm so sorry, bt. It's always an extra-shitty thing to deal with, that last jab of pain in a wound you thought had mostly healed. I'm vibing hard for huge good things for you in 2006. The universe totally owes you.

Hee. Oh no, this won't be the last jab of pain. That one's going to come when she tells me she's pregnant. I'm not even going to pretend I'll be ready for that one. That will hurt big time.

But, y'know, things are good right now. I've managed to get comfortable here, I've got a good job, friends, hobbies, and my brother living with me. Most of the time, I feel very fortunate. The rest of the time, I'm talking to my sister. Who, I've recently learned, is engaged to some guy I've never met, who is, I'm assured, "fully sick". Lucky sister.

Huh. The Brick Moon

Which IIRC is one of the first (if not the first) look at the possibility of putting people in earth orbit.

Down and out in the Magic Kingdom

which is new. But you can still get from manybooks

and it was good.

Plunkett of Tammany Hall

Plunkitt with an "i" actually. First edition 1905.

"A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics...."

Chapter One: Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft.

Hee.

Ooh - they have 45 titles by Jules Verne (although many are in French).

Thanks for the correction, and I'm so chuffed that someone else knows that book! My best friend and I love it but I find no one generally has hear of him.

Full name is George Washington Plunkitt, btw.

Now that I think about it, my Plunkitt fangirliness has a lot to do with why I like Mayor Daley so much...

but I find no one generally has heard of him

Yeah, I only heard about him because I have the same last name, spelled with the more conventional -ett ending.

Um, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Prisoner of Zenda.

And TSP is anti-Semitic as HELL, very embarrassing. Let us all pretend the last chapter doesn't exist.

Mrs. Warrens Profession OK -play, but also published.

Ooh - Kidnapped and The Black Arrow, Three Musketeers

Hmm - love 20,000 leagues under the sea when I was 11. I wonder If I'd enjoy it today. Don't remember it well enough to rec or not.

Umm - hate to confess- Mary Poppins One really horribly racist chapter you want will want to skip though - the one where she takes the kids to visit four racist stereotypes representing four directions. If you can get past that - Mary Poppins in the book was really a very sinister figure.

Another childhood book At the Back of the North Wind. Have not read it as an adult, so don't know if it as a great a weepy for grownups as for kids. [On edit - a really sickly sentimentallity - but there is a lot of good goth stuff hidden under the treacle.]

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass still holds up for me as an adult, as does Wind in the Willows