Balzac fans- what's your favorite?

I%26#39;m loading my PDA with books for the summer and want to include several works by Balzac- but whew! This guy was beyond prolific! Where should I start?

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I read Le Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet 35 years ago and enjoyed them very much.

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I read Le Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet 35 years ago and enjoyed them very much.

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I read Le Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet 35 years ago and enjoyed them very much.

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Sorry, I studied French Lit, but my tastes were more towards Zola, Moliere and Rabelais.

Pere Goriot is the only one that comes to mind.

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I agree that Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet were excellent and their popularity is evidenced by the fact they are still being published in paperback. I started reading Balzac with Lost Illusions (which was also in paperback) and this led me to seek out a complete set of his %26quot;Comedy Humaine%26quot; series in the Sydney University Library that was published in either the late 1800s or early 1900s. I read them all over a period of about 2 years. It was great because, although the more famous and popular of the novels had been read before, I had to carefully slit open the pages in most of the other lesser known novels.

I thought some of the novels were quite lame but I was drawn in by the characters like Rastignac that pop up in a number of novels. The main character in Lost Illusions, Lucien de Rubempre, and his story reminded me in some ways of Frederic in Flaubert%26#39;s %26quot;Sentimental Education%26quot; and my suggestion is that you read %26quot;Lost Illusions%26quot; and then %26quot;Sentimental Education%26quot;, which I think is the better book.

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I love finding old books and cutting the pages- and I love the way they smell-

Thanks for the suggestions- found them all on ereader!

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my favourites were la peau de chagrin, and le chef-d%26#39;oeuvre inconnu. i am really not a big reader, but these two ones, i read them in maybe one or 2 days (when other books took me like 2 weeks to read lol, except les fourmis from bernard weber, the 3 of them).