I’ve added to this list. I still want to do a Non-Fiction one, eventually, but … you know … time permitting. Some authors are represented multiple times here. Other authors aren’t represented at all. For no real reason. Don’t read too much into it. Don’t say “You forgot to mention …” This isn’t meant to be definitive. I’ve written posts about many of these at one point or another. I recommend them all, if you’re looking for something to read!
Possession
The first Byatt I read, and for that I am glad. On the strength of Possession I read everything she wrote. The book was a profound experience for me. It tells the story of two Victorian-era poets and two 20th-century literature scholars. Byatt lampoons academia, post-modernism, but also (as a post-modernist herself) uses the dual-storyline to examine issues of identity, language, and love. If you’re a book-reader, and can’t experience anything without thinking, “OMG, this is like that scene in Dickens/Austen/Eliot …” then you’ll recognize yourself in Possession too. Can we respond to anything in a fresh way anymore? Or is the weight of history too damn heavy? How much of that weight of history forms US as well? We act according to codes. We “believe” in things that alter our behavior. What is lost is the possibility of connecting to one another.
Catch-22
Despite the fact that the O’Malleys are Catch-22 fanatics (and basically shun you until you’ve read it), I came to the book late. I was reading it in August, 2001. Laughing out loud, making scenes on busses and subways, tears streaming down my face. Major Major Major Major. The book is wrapped up in 9/11 for me since I was reading it on the bus that morning, and put it down when it became clear something was happening across the river. It would be the last fiction I could read for over a year. A masterpiece.
The Kremlin Ball
This book was unfinished at the time of Malaparte’s death in 1957. It was just translated into English for the first time, and released by the New York Review of Books Classics. I devoured this grotesque tale about “Marxist nobility,” how the Bolsheviks immediately arranged themselves into an elite class, as voracious and silly as the Tsarist aristocracy they had toppled. Cameos by famous people, like Stalin, like ballet stars. An astonishing book. Vicious. I wonder at its not being published in English until now. The squeamishness of the Western “intelligentsia” at facing up to and acknowledging the monstrousness of the Soviet regime … did that have something to do with it? At any rate, we have the book now. I love it so much.
Lolita
It never leaves you. Even when you wish it would. Staggering.
Harriet the Spy
I would not be who I am today if I had not read this book at age 10. The most personality-forming and influential book I have ever read.
Mating: A Novel
Hated by some, revered by others. I’m in the latter group. It is a first-person narrative (Norman Rush is a man, and the narrator is an unnamed woman – that alone may disqualify it in certain circles. Not me.) The woman is an anthropologist, working on her thesis in Botswana. Adrift. She hears of a colony somewhere out in the desert run by a mysterious Socialist activist named Nelson Denoon. He apparently thinks the world, in general, would be a better place if women were in positions of power. The community he created is a trial run: women run the show, with men subservient support-staff. Unnamed narrator is intrigued (about the colony or about Nelson Denoon? Equal parts both), so she decides to trek out there and see for herself what is happening. After a death-defying (literally) journey through the desert, she reaches the colony. And that’s all I’ll say. Some people are so enraged by the voice of the narrator, and I suppose I get it. It’s a distinctive voice: arch, filled with puns, obsessively self-aware, with a daunting vocabulary. (Keep your dictionary nearby.) Some are INCENSED that a man would DARE to write as a woman. Sigh. If it works, it works. Besides here’s the deal and I have no qualms saying this: The book is a total validation of many of the things I have felt and experienced, of the challenges faced by cerebral sexually-liberated brainiac OBNOXIOUS women – “difficult” women, so to speak. We are VERY under-represented in literature. In life, too. I felt so “seen” by the voice of this book (which, apparently, was based on Rush’s wife – not the character so much as the voice), that I couldn’t even believe it existed. There are those who disagree. C’est la vie. It’s a profound book about “intellectual love.” Another concept which I have felt, experienced, named for myself – but rarely seen portrayed, or at least not in this way.
Another Country
There isn’t one American “problem” he doesn’t cover. It’s all there. One of the great American novels.
Hopeful Monsters
One of my favorite novels. Top 5. The people I’ve recommended it to (besides my friend Ted) are put off by its questioning breathless repetitive style. It’s a book about concepts and theories: political, scientific, social. Hopeful Monsters tells the story of the 20th century through two separate narratives: Eleanor, a Jewish girl growing up in Berlin just as Hitler rose to power, and Max, a British boy raised in the elitist environment of the Bloomsbury group. The two characters have the same voice. It is not a normal novel. It is a novel of ideas, of philosophy, of constant questions. The whole book is a posed question. In the Internet age, we no longer can use rhetorical questions, because the majority no longer recognize rhetoric, and think a posed rhetorical question is begging for an answer (as opposed to begging for contemplation of deeper themes). Mosley dips into all the major philosophical/political battles: The Berlin battles between Communists and Social Democrats. The rise of Nazism. The growing understanding of genetics and DNA. Einstein’s theories about time and space. The murder of Rosa Luxemburg. The Manhattan Project. The Spanish Civil War. It’s the definition of epic. And yet it’s connected and coherent: it is the ideas that hold the whole thing together. Mosley was the son of British fascist leader, Oswald Mosley, and much of his work as a writer was one long repudiation of his father’s monstrous ideas.
Amongst Women
John McGahern only wrote six novels and a memoir. All of them are worthwhile, but Amongst Women is his masterpiece. The story of an Irish family: the father is an old bitter Patriot who fought in the Irish civil war, the defining event of his life – and three daughters, who circle around their difficult father. The book is a portrait of the Irish family – in particular the very specific relationship between Irish fathers and their daughters. It’s devastating.
The Bone People: A Novel
Keri Hulme is from New Zealand, and Bone People is her first book – which then went on to win the Booker, and rightly so. She hasn’t written a novel since. I experience this as a huge loss. However: if THIS is your only book … well, that’s not too shabby. How often does an author appear with a truly unique voice? Almost never. There are only three characters in the novel: Kerewin, a hermit Maori woman, living in a stone tower in the middle of a swamp. She has set up her life to avoid other people. Into her cloister arrives Joe, an unrepentant drunk and Joe’s little son. The reason to read this astonishing book is Hulme’s writing. It’s unlike anything else. I have been waiting 30 years for her to publish another novel.
Rogue Male
Charley told me to read this 1937 novel. (Within the first two pages, I thought, “Wait … is this the source material for Man Hunt?” I love feeling smart, because yes, of course, it is. It’s been made into a movie a couple of times.) Charley said to me, “This book makes the case that assassination is sometimes necessary.” Brilliant novel, even more so when you consider the date it was published.
The Shipping News
My introduction to Annie Proulx, as I’m sure it was for most people. I was bombarded with so many recommendations to read it, including the guy I was in love with at the time (“You gotta read it. It reminds me of you.” I still don’t know why he said that) – that it was almost annoying. I mean, strangers were basically coming up to me saying, “Have you read The Shipping News yet?” Finally I read it and I saw what the fuss was about. The final page makes me cry. (I referenced it in my article about Phantom Thread.)
Middlemarch
I am amazed that this book even exists. That George Eliot existed. I’ve written a lot about it so I won’t go over that here. Middlemarch is the detailed (understatement) story of the emotional/social/sexual/economic situation of one small English town on the verge of the Industrial Revolution. Dorothea Brooke haunts me. That would have been me, in another era. I take Dorothea Brooke very personally. Eliot flows between the prosaic and an almost God-like omniscience, a quality that is no longer valued (unfortunately). She sticks on the ground with her characters, and then, in a moment’s notice, flies into the stratosphere and makes a comment about the human condition. So confident.
Sword of Honor
How does one write a screwball comedy about England’s preparation for and then fighting in WWII? I have no idea, but read Sword of Honor and that’s what you’ll find.
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
Harrowing. A random post I wrote about “The Judge” still generates comments: people find the post who have just read the book and need to talk.
American Pastoral
I’ve got gaps in my “education” and the huge male writers who emerged in the mid-20th century is one such gap. I’m on a self-induced program to rectify this. I don’t feel I can participate fully in the culture without reading “those guys” (as I call them). So hey there, I’m the last person on the planet to realize Philip Roth is the Bomb. I’m happy to join the party.
The Blue Castle
An “adult” book by the author of Anne of Green Gables. A dreamy tale of a shy spinster, overrun by her horrible bossy family, who escapes into the arms of a mysterious stranger who lives out in the woods in a magical house she calls “the blue castle.” A satisfying tale of love coming late, to someone who never thought it would come at all, never thought she was deserving.
The Colorist
I don’t think this novel is in print anymore. This saddens me. There would be a whole new audience for it now, especially in our comics-book-culture, with the growing awareness of the sexism so rampant in that world. Published in 1990, The Colorist is about a “colorist” for a specific comic, one of only two women on staff. The comic she works on is called “Electra,” a low-rent Wonder Woman. The narrator and her best friend – the other woman on staff, who’s an inker – out of sheer boredom and frustration, spend their free time creating an alternate version, where Electra lands in New York City, and tries to survive, becoming homeless, getting roped into sexually sketchy situations, used, abused, and confused. The colorist is dating a mysterious Irish photographer who disappears for months at a time to danger spots around the world. She gets sucked into the vacuum of his absences. It’s a great New York novel too. I highly recommend it!
The Great Gatsby
I always forget how SHORT this book is. Side note but related: I adored Baz Luhrman’s movie. People who complained that the movie was “excessive” did not understand the book at ALL.
I Married a Communist
So painful and enraging it makes you want to throw the book across the room. The Communist witch-hunts of 1950s America. It’s all here. It’s a DISGRACE. And there are still those among us who would do it all over again. We have learned nothing.
The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May
Words cannot express how much I have loved reading these books (a series with no end in sight). I’ve been obsessed with Danielewski every since I read his House of Leaves
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
She is one of my favorite writers. There’s a flat affect to her tone which is very difficult to imitate (although many try), which creates the creepy elegiac mood of strangeness in her best work.
The Passion
One of my favorite books ever written. I remember where I was when I read it. I remember the impression it made. I had already read Winterson’s novel Sexing the Cherry and I was hungry for more. I wrote a big post about my “journey” with Winterson here. I’ve stuck with her through all of her experimental phases, mainly on the strength of The Passion.
Moby Dick
I was forced to read it in high school and found it a chore. My friends and I sat on the beach, cramming it in in the final week of August, and complaining about it. Why is every other chapter some marine biology lesson? WHY??? I had read Charles Dickens as a child, stretching my vocabulary, I always read books that were too “old” for me. I have always loved challenging reads. But Moby Dick was beyond me. Then, in my 30s, I re-read it again and the top of my head blew off. The richness of it, the strangeness of it – it is completely modern. Ahead of its time, ahead of ours. We haven’t caught up yet.
It Can’t Happen Here
Well, yes. It CAN happen here. And Lewis knew that. He predicted it better than he probably even knew at the time.
Darkness at Noon
One of the most surprising things about the Soviet show trials in the 1930s, put on like theatre for gullible Western press (Stalin’s “useful idiots”) were the confessions. All of these people confessed to the most heinous crimes. That meant they must have done it, right? There had to at least be SOME guilt on the accused’s part. Confessing to something you did not do seems absolutely unbelievable, you think, NOTHING could make me say I committed a crime if I HADN’T committed the crime. The problem of false confession, or confession gathered under strenuous pressure, is still with us. We can see what happened with the Central Park Five, who were compelled to confess after being separated from their parents, and kept awake for over 24 hours, in isolated interrogation rooms. If you want to understand how someone confesses to something they did not do, if you want to know the process of “being broken down”, described in minute detail, then you need look no further than Darkness at Noon. It shows what it is like to be broken down, and then built back up in the image required by the State. Darkness at Noon is one of the most important novels of the 20th century.
The Last Thing He Wanted
One of her crazy paranoid novels: with everything she has written – reportage and essays and travelogues – her crazy paranoid novels (this one, plus A Book of Common Prayer
Pride and Prejudice
Sometimes I forget how hilarious this book is.
Notes from Underground
Boyhood of Grace Jones
One of my favorite books growing up. I hadn’t read it since I was 10 years old, so I re-visited it recently. It’s terrific, even better than I remembered it. It’s about a 10-year-old girl who wants to be a boy, and wears her father’s Navy outfits, and resists the pull of popular culture (in this case, Clark Gable).
That Was Something
My friend Dan’s first novel. A hypnotic and emotional portrait of a young cinephile’s experiences in mid-late-90s New York City. I wrote about it here.
Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran
So controversial when it was first published that the author was imprisoned. Written in a sparse fairy-tale style, it has elements of magical realism while also being a hard-hitting and vicious critique of the position of women in Iran. A short book, but explosive.
Reading in the Dark: A Novel
Deane is a well-known Irish poet (my post about him here, and Reading in the Dark is his first novel, about the ghost-ridden childhood of the main character, growing up in Derry, Northern Ireland, in the wake of WWII, up to the time of the late 60s and early 70s. Incredible book.
That Night
One of my favorite writers writing today. I adored Charming Billy
The Loved One
A laugh-out-loud funny book about – of all things – funeral homes and Hollywood.
The Master and Margarita
A masterpiece, one of the best books of the 20th century. Bulgakov wrote it in the mid-to-late 1920s at a time of great chaos in the brand-new Soviet Union. The reality was becoming clear. Lenin was dead. Stalin was in. Kirov hadn’t been murdered yet, but perceptive people like Victor Serge and Mikhail Bulgakov sensed that something was coming. Something even worse than what was already happening. Bulgakov finished the book, but knew he could not get it published. Even having the manuscript around felt too dangerous, so Bulgakov burned it. A couple of years later, he wrote it out again from memory. By that time, things had gotten much much worse. It was 1931. Kirov was murdered in 1934, so the Terror was still to come, but Bulgakov saw which way the wind was blowing. What must it be like to write a book that you know can never be published? A book so explosive it would mean your execution? Bulgakov died in 1940, and the book was (mostly) finished. It would not be published (and then only by an outlet in Paris) until 1967. During his lifetime, Bulgakov had written things which had been banned (a play was personally picked by Stalin for condemnation). There was a sequel to all of this: His plays continued to be banned. He could not make a living. He wanted to leave the Soviet Union, and was so desperate that he wrote a personal letter to Stalin, begging for permission to leave. Stalin actually called him – in person – and asked him if he was serious. Bulgakov said that he felt, as a Russian, he needed to stay in Russia, but he could not get work. Stalin gave him permission to work at the theatre, and Bulgakov found work as a translator, etc. Extraordinary. During all of this tumult, he was working on The Master and Margarita, one of the most subversive books of all time.
Bleak House
One of my favorite Dickens. It made me laugh out loud, it made me cry. A gigantic sprawl of a novel.
At Swim-Two-Birds
“Flann O’Brien” is one of those names – like William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Brendan Behan, Maud Gonne – that reaches so far back in my childhood that it pre-dates my conscious memory. They were the atmosphere of our home, the books on the shelves, the art on the walls. They were there before I understood their importance. I think I first read At Swim-Two-Birds in college, on my own. The first sentence, with its over-written self-consciousness, makes me laugh out loud:
Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes’ chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression.
Get ready to laugh in public.
Jane Eyre
My favorite novel. I often forget how WEIRD it is, and then I read it again and go, “Oh my God, wait a minute, WHAT?” The cross-dressing incident? Mr. Rochester dresses up as a woman, so he can quiz Jane, basically saying, like a middle-schooler: “Do you like Mr. Rochester? Check Yes or No.” People who lump Charlotte Bronte together with Jane Austen can’t have understood either writer. Jane Eyre is OUT THERE.
We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel
This book tormented my life for a good 4 days. I could not put it down. I canceled appointments so I could finish it. The VOICE of the novel puts an ice-cube down your back. You yearn for omniscience because our narrator is not, in any way/shape/form, reliable. I needed to talk to my friend Beth about it, so I sent her a copy immediately. She read it, and called me, screaming her outrage about the husband. “I wanted to throw the book against the wall!” See? I hadn’t “gotten” that, but she – as a teacher – knew the type, and hated the type. We had some awesome conversations about it.
The Mill on the Floss
The last two pages are so tragic that I started crying when I finished the book.
Geek Love: A Novel
I’ve written a lot about this book. I remember where I was when I finished it. I was sitting on the front porch of my house in Mt. Airy, outside Philadelphia. A cup of cold coffee sat beside me. The trees were exploding in green. My boyfriend was taking a run. After the final sentence, I literally BURST into sobs. My poor boyfriend returned from his run to find his girlfriend, who had been calm when he left her, pacing and sobbing on the porch. I never said dating me was easy or relaxing. But I’m worth it, y’all. The experience of that book was so pointed, so upsetting, so emotional – that I have never read it since. I have stayed the fuck away from it as though it is radioactive. It has never left me. Those characters. That story.
Winter’s Tale
As my friend Mitchell said to me, “This is a book rife with fin de siecle sentiments. With a little bit of ancien regime.” I love it when Mitchell throws French words around. An unforgettable experience: The opening sequence with the swirling fog, and the sentient white horse. The den of thieves in the reservoir tunnels. The consumptives lying on the roofs of the brownstones. The tent city set up on the frozen Hudson River. The magical icy town up north, with the gigantic ice wall spanning the Hudson. It is one of those rare books that makes me see the world – my world – in a different way. I cannot count how many times I have looked at New York, a city I have lived in (or near to) for decades, and think, “This is like in Winter’s Tale.”
Missing Reels
Farran is a friend, a film critic and brilliant thinker, with a blog I will always be thankful I discovered, The Self-Styled Siren. Missing Reels takes place in 1980s New York, when the city was still clogged with revival and art-house theatres. A young film fan, working in retail, living with two gay men, trips over a movie mystery: it is revealed that her elderly downstairs neighbor was a star in the silent era, and one of her films was called The Mysteries of Udolpho. Apparently, like so many other films, The Mysteries of Udolpho has been lost. Our young heroine becomes determined to find the film. Her search leads her all over Manhattan, tracking down leads through film preservation societies, professors, film fans, long-distance phone calls to this or that organization/individual/random home-owner – who might have some knowledge about this mythical lost film. Missing Reels is a celebration of nerdiness, a beautiful portrait of obsession and passion. Normal people who do not get obsessed like this tell such individuals to calm down, let it go. But obsessives are constitutionally unable to calm down. Passion/obsession makes life worth living. Farran’s prose is lively and funny, and the many characters that populate her novel are engaging, intelligent, and distinct. There’s a romance that takes on a distinctly screwball aspect, and he gets sucked into her obsession. It is a requirement, actually. In a sneakily powerful way, Missing Reels is a statement on the importance of film preservation. Farran does not lecture, though. She keeps the pace moving, the dialogue snippy and amusing, and the plot – with its multiple intersecting layers of confusion and mystery-solving – is engaging and compelling.
A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
I was going to put Ulysses on this list, but I’ll spare you. You have to come to that novel on your own. Portrait of the Artist, however, is far more accessible, although by the end Joyce starts fragmenting and shattering the prose, the common form of the novel actually breaks apart at the end of Portrait, leading the way to Ulysses (and again to Finnegans Wake, where the fragmentation is total). James Joyce felt he had to rid himself of the influence of Family/Religion/Country, and Portrait of the Artist shows that progression. This book makes me miss my father. We had a lot of good conversations about it.
Something Happened
It’s quite often very boring. The boredom is the point. Can you stare into that gaping maw and not blink? There were times I struggled to keep going. But I have trust in him as a writer, and so I finally just surrendered. It’s a book about nothing. It’s a book about boredom and inconsistency and what it looks like if you lie to yourself every other sentence. It is BRUTAL. It is UNPLEASANT. It is often HILARIOUS. Very challenging but well worth it.
Nineteen Seventy-Four: The Red Riding Quartet, Book One
This is part of a quartet, right? There are four books that make up the whole. I read them all in quick succession a couple of years ago. They are so complex and layered I felt I couldn’t take a break from them because I would lose the thread. Now I never say this about any writer, really, but I make an exception for David Peace: If anyone is actually picking up the Joycean mantle, it’s David Peace. I was blown away by his writing and the sheer experimental levels of it, its devotion to its own reality (as opposed to the more commonplace reality of being clear to the reader), its layered images/symbols/metaphors, its bravura style … The books are tough-going at times. Language repeats, obsessively, throughout. We are in the mind of the serial killer. We are in the mind of others who become obsessed. It’s a police procedural and of course you want to know what happens. But the reason to read it is Peace’s magnificent experimental writing. He is actually trying something new, he is attempting to give the inner experience of its characters – not just the outer experience – a voice.
The Postman Always Rings Twice
All the graphic sex scenes in the world cannot compare to the hotness of this:
I had to have her, if I hung for it.
I had her.
Emily of New Moon/ Emily Climbs/ Emily’s Quest
The “Emily trilogy” by Montgomery is superior to the “Anne” books. I love the Anne books. Please. I played Anne Shirley in a production in college. I know my Anne Shirley inside and out. But the Emily books are darker, Emily is not ingratiating, like Anne, Emily is difficult, and intense. She lives with her mother’s family, none of whom end up having hidden hearts of gold like Marilla and Matthew. Emily makes do. These books go to much darker places than Anne Shirley could ever even conceive. As a “dark” person myself, I “relate” to these books more. “She will love deeply, she will suffer terribly, she will have glorious moments to compensate.” I took comfort from those lines from Emily of New Moon, and I was only 15. Somewhere I just knew that my life was going to be difficult.
Birds of America: Stories 
She is one of my favorite writers. Birds of America is the best of her short story collections (although they’re all good). She can be both tragic and hilarious, sometimes in the same story. Nobody like her. You could recognize her prose in a line-up in a dark alley.
Franny and Zooey
It’s rare to read a book that makes you realize you need to radically change your life, and then do so. I was sitting in a cafe on Ashland Street in Chicago, having coffee and reading Franny and Zooey. I’d read it before, it’s a fave. It was 1995, and I was recovering from a trainwreck of a breakup, finding comfort with this guy (who had been a constant for a couple of years at that point) I was doing plays, but somehow spinning my wheels. I wasn’t happy. I read Franny and Zooey in one sitting, feeling a tremendous source of energy flowing into me, so huge that it scared me. The book was demanding something of me.
“Somewhere along the line – in one damn incarnation or another, if you like – you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You’re stuck with it now. You can’t just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to – be God’s actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? You can at least try to, if you want to – there’s nothing wrong in trying.” There was a slight pause. “You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around.”
I felt a finger pointing at me. I felt the urgency. I would be gone from Chicago in less than 5 months, having applied to grad school, flown to New York to audition, gotten in, packed up, and left. I count Franny and Zooey as the first step in the process of total upheaval. I have mixed feelings about the choice to leave Chicago now. I wish I had stayed. But whatever, I didn’t, and I needed a reminder that I actually was in charge of my own life. Franny and Zooey was the reminder. I’m afraid to read it again, because who knows where I might end up.
The Flamethrowers
The hype around this book was so intense, I resisted reading it, because I don’t like to be told what to do. I never said I wasn’t a contrarian. On the contrary. Finally, though, I read it. All I’ll say is the hype is justified. The Flamethrowers plays by its own rules, and Kushner feels no obligation to create a conventional story, conventionally told. Good for her. (Unfortunately, she also was one of the cowards who protested the recent PEN award for Charlie Hebdo. I was so bummed when I saw her name on that despicable list. Don’t let that deter you from reading the novel, if possible. If that incident had occurred before I read The Flamethrowers I would have been DAMNED if I picked up a book written by her, so I understand if you just can’t.)
Inherent Vice
Earlier I said that it’s rare the book that makes me burst into sobs. Even more rare is the book that makes me laugh loud and long and hard. Not just an ironic chuckle, but tears-streaming-down-my-face hilarity. Inherent Vice is so funny I had to put it down and just succumb, tears streaming down my face, multiple times. It is a dazzling feat of paranoia, mood, and humor. It captures the death of a time, the birth of a new time. When I read it, it felt completely un-adaptable. (Oh me of little faith.) How on earth do you portray the swirling conspiratorial atmosphere of early-1970s California, post-Manson? The book is a private-detective story, a Sam Spade high on drugs, but as you go further into the maze, you start to realize it doesn’t matter “who” was responsible. Trying to figure it out is irrelevant. We are ALL responsible.
Never Let Me Go
The book haunted me for days after I put it down.
Wolf Hall
I am waiting with baited breath for the final installation of the trilogy. Publication cannot come soon enough. Oh, Hilary Mantel, thank you for existing.
The End of the Affair
One of the most Catholic novels ever written. Crushing.
Then We Came to the End: A Novel
Comedy can be more profound than tragedy, not to mention more difficult for a writer to pull off honestly, and sustain. Then We Came to the End, a first novel (extraordinary!) is that rarity: a legitimately funny novel (I laughed out loud on the first couple of pages, and that hilarity continues.) But it is also one of the greatest books about the American white-collar work-force – the office drones – that I’ve ever read. There are two other entries in my own personal Grand Triumvirate of Office Work Stories: Joseph Heller’s Something Happened
Shopgirl: A Novella
This book struck a very deep chord within me. I felt named and seen by this book. It’s too painful for me to re-read. I don’t want to think those things again or let those things into my life anymore. But I’m glad SOMEONE put my experience into words. And so much for the thought that men can’t understand the experience of women. Speak for yourself. Plenty of male authors have NAMED my experience. Women don’t own imaginative empathy. This section:
As she sits in a booth and checks the amplifiers for Jeremy’s signature stencil, it never occurs to Mirabelle to observe herself, and thus she is spared the image of a shy girl sitting alone in a bar on Saturday night. A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred. She never feels sorry for herself, except when the overpowering chemistry of depression inundates her and leaves her helpless. She moved from Vermont hoping to begin her life, and now she is stranded in the vast openness of L.A. She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near misses is starting to overwhelm her. What Mirabelle needs is some omniscent voice to illuminate and spotlight her, and to inform everyone that this one has value, this one over here, the one sitting in the bar by herself, and then to find her counterpart and bring him to her.
Frankenstein
You know, no matter how many times I re-read this, I somehow forget how STRANGE it is. How eerie its mood.
The Pigman
One of my eternal faves. I have loved this book since I was assigned to read it in middle school. It MORE than holds up. It gets better as you get older.
Wuthering Heights
A truly mad book. I didn’t realize how mad until I re-read it as an adult. When I read it as a tempestuous teenager, it felt almost like a documentary.
Vile Bodies
I might consider this to be his most scary-brilliant book. You HOWL with laughter for the majority of it (when the chick sleeps over at what ends up being the Prime Minister’s house and appears at breakfast still in her Hawaiian costume from the party the night before – I DIED laughing) … and then, somehow, Waugh sneaks up on you and you start to feel the cataclysm towards which the whole world was wrenching itself towards. It’s not a war book, but World War II is in the air that Vile Bodies breathes.
Inglorious
Another first novel. I’m not a big first-novel person. But enough people I respect mentioned this novel repeatedly, so finally I picked it up. It is a portrait of the downward spiral of a crack-up. Sounds same ol’ same ol’ right? Another Bell Jar, or poor white girl with her whining. Well, no. Having had one or two of these crackups myself, I found Inglorious so on the money about the mechanisms of a breakup it was harrowing to read. Damn near unreadable. I’m not sure I need to read it again. Excellent.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I had a huge crush on Huckleberry Finn at 10 years old. I yearned for him. I loved him. I saw his sensitivity, and wanted it to be cherished. I wanted the world to be kind to him. I thrilled at the prospect of creating your own world, your own reality, unmoored from the dual shores of the Mississippi – the shores respresenting obligation, oppression, and cruelty. I was little, but I got the book.
Mildred Pierce
A pitch-black noir about a woman who makes pies. Only in America.
Beware of Pity
I’ve written quite a bit about it, and Stefan Zweig as well. Anyone who saw Grand Budapest Hotel will recognize the influence of Zweig (much of it was based, loosely, on his writing about the final gasps of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.) Beware of Pity is an extraordinary novel about a young soldier stationed in a garrison town, who becomes enmeshed in a rich family’s twisted emotional life. It is a brilliant and cynical examination of what “pity” means, and as the title suggests, Zweig felt uneasy about it. Not for the faint-hearted or sentimental.
Crime And Punishment
Any element of “crime” and “punishment” NOT included in this novel is probably not worth knowing.
Sexing the Cherry
My first encounter with this extraordinary and strange writer. It’s a fantastical tale, incorporating elements of fairy tales, myths, legends, tall tales … it takes place in Elizabethan England. A monstrous gigantic woman called The Dog Woman lives in the swamps on the Thames. There’s an explorer who brings to England the novelty called the “banana” from one of his travels. Sexing the Cherry is both realistic and mystical, and involves (as the title says) the fluidity of gender and identity – Winterson’s stock-in-trade.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Highsmith is the ice pick in the back, the knock at your door at 3 a.m. The Ripley books are the psychopathic mind from inside that mind.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
I have to check my records, but this might be the gay-est book ever written. You can see why it caused such a stir and was part of his undoing. It is a breathless act of courage, seen especially in the context of the time in which it was written. Wilde does not bury the lede or use subtext. He doesn’t hide in plain sight. He puts it all out there in the clear light of day.
Cal
A phenomenal piece of work, with one of the best final sentences I can think of. It’s shocking. And although it shocked me, I realized: Yes. That is exactly where this book needed to go. That is exactly what Cal had been looking for.
The Giver
My sister Jean is a great judge of books and this is one of her favorites. It starts slowly. You learn the rules of this weird world as you go, a world where all choice has been removed from the populace … and how a little boy named Jonas starts to ask questions, to see things beyond, to experience things like fear, pain, courage … all because of his relationship with an old man called The Giver. My eyes flooded with tears over the last three pages.
Bartleby, The Scrivener A Story of Wall-Street
“I would prefer not to.” As I’ve grown older, I have gained self-confidence and am not afraid to stand my ground. But never in a million years, no matter how much I grow, will I ever be as confident as Bartleby. I think about him often.
Bad Behavior: Stories
I’ve read Gaitskill’s novels, too, but I think she, like Lorrie Moore, is most suited to the short story. Her second collection, Because They Wanted to: Stories
Master and Commander
These books are tied up in my dad for me, so although I tore through the first 8 books, I’ve been unable to read them since. They make me sad. They make me miss my dad. I recommended them to him – and he had never read them. It was hard to recommend books to my dad. He read the entire series in, like, a month. I was thrilled. I will get back to them eventually. They are some of the most pleasurable books I have ever read. Almost every page has a jewel on it.
Prep: A Novel
I have my sister Jean to thank for this recommendation. Another first novel! The reason to read it is for the “voice.” Apparently, in the various workshops Sittenfeld took, the feedback she got was to alter the voice: it was too unsympathetic. (Our culture and its fanaticism about “relateability” and “likability” and “feeling good” is a cult. Resist it. It will take work but fucking resist. It’s a conspiracy to keep us harmless and soft. RESIST.) Prep tells the story, in first-person narration, of a girl’s four years in a hoity-toity prep school. It sounds YA-ish. It is not. It is an adult book, full of piercing observations that will make you think, “Wow. I have never heard that particular specific TYPE of interaction described so accurately.”
Going After Cacciato
Along with The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien’s collection of short pieces, Going After Cacciato is one of the best novels about Vietnam. The way Cacciato takes on a mythic size, “the substance of things hoped for.” Is Cacciato still out there? What does he mean to you? To me? To all of us?
The Likeness
The second book in Tana French’s ongoing fantastic series about a fictional homicide department in current-day Dublin. They’re addictive. This one – and The Secret Place, which I just read – are my favorites, although all of them are good. She is THE author of the Celtic Tiger and its downfall.
A Wrinkle in Time
The book’s magic never palls. It’s some pretty heavy shit, even for a teenager. The first time I read it, the final confrontation made me cry. This was the book that made me a L’Engle fan for life, which meant I even read her Biblical series and all her religious books (some of which are wonderful- I love the “Joseph” series – but some of which … oh boy, no.) But listen, you write a book like A Wrinkle in Time? I’m in. I’ll follow you wherever.
The Red and the Black
Stendhal is funny in very modern ways. The book is filled with epigraphs: each chapter starts with one. But he made most of them up!! He gives some ponderous quote, attributes it to a real-life author, when said author never said/wrote anything like that in the first place. He sure sent the scholars scurrying through their book collections trying to track things down. The epigraphs give the book a “serious” feel, but they are not serious at all. They’re one big lying joke. And the characters are all out of their minds! In a state of sustained hysteria. It’s extremely entertaining.
Pardon Me, You’re Stepping On My Eyeball
This is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for teenagers. It’s brilliant. Way WAY out there on the razor’s edge.
11/22/63: A Novel
A masterpiece. A great American novel. Don DeLillo has never written anything this good, and he keeps trying to write something this good. I mention DD because critics often say King is “almost” as good as DeLillo, or this or that book is almost as good as White Noise or Libra or whatever else. “It deserves to stand alongside DeLillo,” they pontificate in their earnestness. Etc. DeLillo is perceived as “serious” and King is not. Fuck that. Seriously: Underworld was about 400 pages too long. I suppose you could say the same for King, but NOT in the case of 11/22/63. It’s not a word too long. In DeLillo I always feel the ATTEMPT, for relevance, for commentary, for big-ness. I didn’t mean to bitch about DeLillo, but his status as Great American Novelist is VERY irksome to me, especially when people like King are sidelined.
Villette
One of the saddest books I’ve ever read. One of the best books about loneliness I’ve ever read. I will never read it again.
Mimi
This book is insane and right up my alley. First: It is a modern-day screwball comedy. The characters are witty wise-crackers, who say stuff like “Hey, pal, watch where you’re goin’.” It is Carole Lombard, William Powell, Cary Grant, in current New York. It’s a middle-aged romance between a plastic surgeon and a crazy cat lady. She’s a feminist and anarchist, she wants to topple the whole patriarchy, while he has devoted his career to making women look younger, i.e. more desirable. This description makes it sound lecturing. It is, in a way, it’s a POLEMIC in novel-form – but it’s also so funny her message is sometimes buried in hilarity. It makes you yearn for funny people, for people who love sex, who wisecrack with each other. I want to live in this book. These characters have serious things on their minds, and they also treat every interaction like a comedic pie-in-the-face opportunity.
Old Filth
How had I not read this book before? It’s about the dying days of the British Empire. Unforgettable. Beautiful writer.
A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel
I love this gigantic novel almost more than I do her Thomas Cromwell trilogy. It’s a book about the French Revolution, told (alternately) by Danton, Robespierre, and Camille Desmoulins. Politics. War. Judgment. Revolution. Who says women only write books about domestic issues and love affairs? Mantel is a heavy-hitter and mainly interested in Power, and how power operates. This is a great book.
The Motel Life: A Novel
I read this in preparation for the movie, which I absolutely loved, and reviewed for Ebert. This is a beautiful and sad book about two damaged brothers, on the run. See the movie too.
The Case of Comrade Tulayev
Considering my Stalin obsession, I have no idea how Victor Serge escaped my notice for so long. Commenter John Vail, a valued reader of this site, recommended Serge to me, and I cannot thank him enough. First I read Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary
This killing [the murder of Kirov] has every right to be called the crime of the century. Over the next four years, hundreds of Soviet citizens, including the most prominent political leaders of the Revolution, were shot for direct responsibility for the assassination, and literally millions of others went to their deaths for complicity in one or another part of the vast conspiracy which allegedly lay behind it. Kirov’s death, in fact, was the keystone of the entire edifice of terror and suffering by which Stalin secured his grip on the Soviet peoples.
Victor Serge, who was a “believer”, traveled back to Soviet Russia in the 20s to work for the new regime, and almost immediately felt which way the wind was blowing. He may have been the very first. By 1936, 1937, many people (outside the idiotic arm of the Western Left) understood that Stalin’s Russia was bad bad news. But to perceive it in 1926? Victor Serge did. The Case of Comrade Tulayev is the lightly-fictionalized account of the murder of Kirov (in the book he is named “Tulayev”) and how that one supposedly random murder reached out its tentacles and suffocated an entire nation of millions of people. A masterpiece.
Stoner
I had never heard of this novel before. Somewhere around December 2014, no less than three people I trusted (my brother and my mother among them) were saying things to me, in hushed voices, practically holding back tears (literally): “You have GOT to read Stoner.” I was like, “What is this book, how have I never heard of it, and why is everyone telling me to read it SIMULTANEOUSLY?” Well, it’s because the New York Review of Books re-issued it in their fabulous series, and there was a huge piece in the New York Times about it, and suddenly it became a best-seller years after it was published. Honestly, I haven’t heard people talk like that about a book since The Shipping News. It was different than “Oh, it’s a great book,” or “Oh, he’s such a good writer.” It was something else. It went deeper. All I can say is, now I will join the chorus of the others, and tell you in a hushed voice, holding back tears, “You have GOT to read this book.”
The Good Soldier
Ford Madox Ford was a big “blank” in my self-directed education. I was not an English major. I grew up with bookish parents who had read everything, but my education was theatre and acting. Any reading I’ve done since I graduated from high school was on my own, and Ford Madox Ford was one of those people I skipped, inadvertently. I read it The Good Soldier in one sitting at the beach this summer. I could not put it down. One of the best examples of an unreliable narrator in literature.
The Handmaid’s Tale
The voice is cold and flat-affect. Traumatized. Dissociated. Women are on the table, as women always are, when power shifts occur. In Atwood’s dystopia, women of child-bearing years are hired out to be “handmaids” to infertile couples who work for the regime. Those considered undesirable are placed in homes of prostitution, or shipped off to shovel nuclear waste in distant locations. Considering the talk in the last couple of years about rape and the inexcusable confusion about female anatomy – inexcusable ESPECIALLY since these bozos are in charge of health care in this country, as well as the near-constant push to police female sexuality, which basically boils down to: Women should not be allowed to have sex for fun – The Handmaid’s Tale is always relevant. Season 1 of the series was good, but the changes made reflected a dismaying shift in operation in our culture, a shift towards needing clarity, hope, empowerment. Sorry, but that’s not what Atwood wrote. Take it up with her.
After the First Death
I read this book when I was 12 years old and it fucking traumatized me. I cannot believe this is labeled a children’s book. Or even a YA book. It is a nightmare. And brilliant. Huge Robert Cormier fan.
The Shark-Infested Custard
A tough pill to swallow, in its casual amorality, but that’s why the book is so good. It takes place in a bell jar of male entitlement, and Willeford understands it like few others do. There is no outside eye. Inside that bell jar is only men, and only their point of view matters. I wrote a piece about the book, and some guy showed up sneering at my “take” on it, that I was part of the conspiracy that wanted to feminize men (I had no idea I was so powerful! Thank you for the compliment!). Methinks he doesn’t understand that portraying something is not an endorsement. Progressives get mixed up about this, too, one of those cases where far right and far left join hands. Willeford is a great great writer.
The Stand
I go through the Lincoln Tunnel every day, and there’s not one day that I don’t think about the scene in the Lincoln Tunnel, with all the stalled cars, and the dead people, having to shoot the gun to light the way out. I should read the book again. It’s been years.
At Close Range : Wyoming Stories
I love her series of Wyoming stories collections, but this one is the best. Her writing is so tough and gnarly and weird. Her own thing. She writes about misfits and eccentric and tough old broads and tougher old cowboys. My life is richer because of Proulx’s writing.
Seymour: An Introduction
J.D. Salinger gets lost in his own parentheticals. And then the novella just stops. Not in mid-sentence, but Salinger puts down his pen (or stops typing), “giving up.” I see this as deliberate, a stylistic thing, as opposed to an author actually unraveling. But again: poignantly painful to read. Almost like Emily’s famous monologue at the end of Our Town: can we ever really BE with one another? Can we ever really SEE one another. In Seymour: An Introduction, J.D. Salinger tries. I got through this one as quick as I could. It’s what it’s like in my own mind, sometimes.
The Days of Abandonment
So of course, her Neopolitan books have gotten most of the press, as well as a mini-series. But this was the first of hers I read. My friend Dan talked to me about this book in such a way that I ordered it DURING our conversation. I read Days of Abandonment, again, in one sitting at the beach. I read it in one sitting because I could not BEAR to put it down. It is beyond my powers of description, so all I can say is: Run, don’t walk, and read this extraordinary novel. The less you know about it the better.
The Grass Harp
Mitchell and I read this story together in college, and we still talk about it. We still reference it constantly. A magical story of a group of unhappy misfit people who create a utopia in a tree house.
Gold Bug Variations
My friend Ted and I (he blogs about art, culture, books, and neuroscience here) are OBSESSED with this novel. It takes as its structure The Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould’s famous recording of it, in particular.) It is about the mid-20th-century fight to isolate DNA and it is also about two separate romances – one in the “now” and one back then. It is about the dovetail of science and music, and the connections Powers makes between DNA and the structures of the Goldberg Variations are dizzying. It’s an intellectual feast, with three main characters: one a NY public librarian, the other a faded scientist, and a kind of extroverted man-about-town who romances the librarian and the two of them befriend the scientist. The book is also about love.
Breaking and Entering
What an extraordinary novel. An aimless couple, together since they were teenagers, spend their weekends breaking into the homes of the rich, who are out of town. They loll about, taking baths, cutting each other’s hair, sleeping, walking on the beach. When the weekend is over, they head home to their lives. Williams’ writing is dreamy, and the book is filled with memorable characters.
Then She Found Me
A writer labeled with the unfair “chick-lit” stamp. I imagine the cutesy covers would put off men from reading them. That would be a mistake. In general, I hope that men do not move past books only because a woman wrote them. I certainly don’t pass by books just because a man wrote them. Elinor Lipman is a prolific novelist, and for those of us who love her, this is a blessing. She writes comedies, but there’s social criticism in them as well. In that way, she’s a modern-day Jane Austen. Comedies of manners. Her books are filled with weirdos and eccentrics, people who sort of stumble into love with each other. Then She Found Me was the first one I read, so that’s why it’s on the list, but you should check out all of them. Her books often make me laugh out loud.
Dubliners
The collection of short stories that launched him into the world. The last story in the collection is “The Dead,” the best short story ever written. It’s hopeless to argue, at least with me. You won’t win. What happens when you read the collection in order is you get a multi-faceted prismatic detailed portrait of Dublin and its inhabitants. There are unhappy spinsters, daydreaming young boys yearning to get out, young lovers hoping for escape, busybody ladies putting together a concert, loafers, party-hounds, political wrangling in the social clubs, boarding houses and public houses, church. Joyce bears his pen like a sword, attacking all he found imbecilic, phony, and anti-human in his country. But then … but then … he ends with “The Dead.” Which redeems us all, even in its tragedy.The final four paragraphs are among the most beautiful passages in all of literature.
Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather
I am from Rhode Island. This book takes place in Rhode Island, and boy, does Jincy Willett GET Rhode Island. That’s the first thing. Second of all, this is (like a couple other on this list) one of those rare books that made me laugh out loud. I gave it to my dad for his birthday. I was in the kitchen making coffee or something, and he was reading it in the living room, and I heard these wild guffaws coming from down the hallway. It tells the story of two sisters during a hurricane bearing down on the state. Rhode Islanders love to panic about weather. Because of 1938, you understand. Jincy Willett has written other novels, and her latest, Amy Falls Down: A Novel
Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself
My favorite of all of her books, and Blume has said it is mostly autobiographical. Sally J. Freedman is a young Jewish girl who becomes convinced her next-door neighbor in Florida is a possible Nazi. It’s a book about being an American Jew, in the wake of WWII and the revelations of the Holocaust and the camps. It’s also about being a teenager. Blume is always good, but she taps into something really personal here.
What Maisie Knew
A tour de force of narration and first-person perspective. Told from the point of view of a little girl caught up in the dissolution of her parents’ marriage. Her parents are monstrous narcissists, the both of them, but she is a little girl, and they are her parents, and most of what is happening she does not understand. She does not have the experience to say, “Hey. I’m an innocent child. Please do not subject me to this adult ugliness.” James tells the entire story only from “what Maisie knew.” People are still trying to imitate what James achieved here.
Get Shorty: A Novel
A perfect book.
Madame Bovary
Re-read recently and had forgotten how hilarious much of it is, in a vicious lampooning sort of way. His descriptions of people! So incredibly mean! He side-swipes them with a sentence only, and there they are, right in front of you, revealed in all their silliness. Flaubert is vicious about the middle class. The book is devastating. I find it hard to believe that I was once fluent enough in French that I read it in French. I could never do that now, it’s been too long and it’s all forgotten. C’est la vie.
East of Eden
One of the byproducts of my early obsession with James Dean was that I read John Steinbeck’s book afterwards. I was 13 years old. It’s a huge book. Dense, complex. The film is the last section of the novel, the final generation. But there are two generations that came before, all of whom have congregated in the fertile Salinas Valley. It is the story of brothers, all of whom have names that start with either “C” or “A.” There is Cathy, one of the best descriptions of an amoral psychopath in literature. I’ve written about it, and her, ad nauseum. I’ve read the book about 4 times at this point, and once I became old enough to really understand it, more and more was revealed to me. There’s the big sprawling Irish-family “neighbors,” with the Chinese cook, Lee, who is the moral center of the story. He doesn’t “see all” or anything like that, in any condescending way, but he has made a choice to live according to a philosophy, to meet the struggles of life having thought out beforehand who he wants to be, and it is THAT that gives him the perspective necessary to see what is REALLY going on. I was so happy I finally got a chance to write about East of Eden (book and film) for the Library of America.
House of Leaves
I woke up in a cold sweat from nightmares while I read this book. One of the scariest books I have ever read. It is about a house that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. I was truly RATTLED by this book. Brilliant.
Ballet Shoes
Along with Harriet the Spy, this was one of the most ‘formative’ books I read as a child. Like, I made life decisions without even realizing that’s what I was doing when I read this book at age 9. I knew where I wanted to go, what world I wanted to enter, I accepted the hard work – at a YOUNG age. It was never about fame or glory. It was about devotion to a craft, single-minded. That’s what this book showed me, the world it opened to me.
The Price of Salt
Written in 1949 and published under a pseudonym, The Price of Salt is a frank story about two women who fall in love. I had already read it, because Highsmith is a favorite, but I re-read it in preparation for my Ebert review of Todd Haynes’ Carol. Those who love Highsmith’s Ripley novels, or Strangers on a Train, or all the rest, should definitely check out The Price of Salt. The ending is breathtaking … Literally: I gasped, the first time around reading it. If all you read of Highsmith were the Ripley books, you’re missing out on an essential part of her artistic life and psyche. There are sections in this book so romantic you want to swoon.
Brooklyn
The story of my great-grandmother basically, and many others in my family going back into the 19th century. To those annoyed at the book because Brooklyn was populated by all colors/creeds, not just Irish (and I’ve encountered one or two of those people): this book is the story of the Irish in Brooklyn. It’s not meant to be the story of everyone. I can’t believe I have to say this, but apparently I do. If you think there are other stories to be told about Brooklyn – and of course there ARE other stories to be told about Brooklyn – then feel free to write one. Do the hard work and write the story you think should be written. Don’t bitch from the sidelines about an IRISH writer writing about Irish people. Tóibín did the hard work telling the story HE wanted to tell. Tóibín was interested in telling the story of HIS people. (And mine. And so many others.) The book is extremely poignant, and extremely well-observed. His description of homesickness – as an actual sickness – is heart-rending. The movie is wonderful (speaking of good adaptations!) Wrote more about Brooklyn here.
Lives of the Saints
A beautiful Southern comedy. I made Mitchell read it when we were living together in Chicago. I’m obsessed with this book, and with her. She’s only written five books, all of which I adore. Nancy Lemann, where are you? You haven’t published in years. Are you working on something now? I beg you: come back!! Lives of the Saints is told from the point of view of an aimless young post-college woman, from Louisiana, returned after 4 years at Brown. She doesn’t know what she’s doing with her life. The entire community is engulfed in various gentle scandals. She parties all night long, she has existential struggles. She and her friend Claude Collier, a wild man who wears seersucker suits and is a magnet for comedies of errors, circulate through oyster bars and blues clubs. Nothing really happens. It’s not a book about its plot (none of her books are). It’s a book about a mood, and a place, and a time.
A Tale of Two Cities
Cinematic, before there was cinema. Those cobblestones drenched with red wine. There’s one scene that is basically a long dolly shot, in essence. The way the narrative flies back and forth across the channel. The unforgettable Sidney Carton, one of my favorite characters in literature. I had to read it in 10th grade, and I thrilled to it even then.
It
My favorite novel of his, although 11/22/63 immediately took its place in the King Pantheon. It is about a monster, of course. But it is really about friendship. And how friendship (and a gang-bang – what, Stephen??) can save us all. One of King’s real gifts as a writer is bittersweet nostalgia for childhood. He remembers. The closing sequence of the book made my heart ACHE.
Scoop
I have written a lot about this book and about how I read it because of Christopher Hitchens’ article about it in The Atlantic. The book review made me laugh out loud, okay? The book is so funny that there was a memorable occasion where I was reading it on my bus commute home and was laughing so hard, and yet trying to be quiet about it, that my face literally froze into an agonized comedy mask. Evelyn Waugh was one of my “gaps” in reading. I was not an English major. I read the classics in high school and in undergrad was an Acting student. So I was on my own in terms of catching up with stuff. I came to Waugh late. Scoop was the first one I read, and I found it unbearably painfully funny (and biting and vicious about the foreign press). I’ve read all of his stuff now. He’s one of my favorite writers. So thank you, Mr. Hitchens!
The Westing Game
This is a kid’s book. The O’Malley siblings were all OBSESSED with it. It’s kind of like Clue, for kids. Agatha Christie, for kids. It’s a marvelously twisted-up whodunit, and everyone who is a suspect lives in this glossy brand-new highrise, all circulating in varying degrees of suspicion. Every character is a crackpot. And of course the central POV is an 11-year-old girl. Catnip for a kid like me. I’m slightly shocked this hasn’t been made into a film. All you’d need to do is lift the entire book into screenplay format. It’s all there.
A Prayer for Owen Meany
My friends and I are huge John Irving fans. Mitchell, me, David, all. My father loved John Irving too. I think Cider House Rules was my dad’s favorite. But Prayer for Owen Meany came along at the right time for me, a book that spoke into some kind of experience that was personal, a book that introduced unforgettable characters – and hilarious set-pieces (the Christmas concert!! Too much!), and ended on a sweeping high note so painful/right that I thought my heart would burst. Also, tangential: I have about 500 cousins. I am desperately close to all of them. We grew up together. I have had more fun with my cousins than any other group on the planet. The “cousin” relationship has not been sufficiently explored in literature. Prayer for Owen Meany understands “cousins” on the deepest level. The fun they all have together is often quite literally death-defying.
Christine Falls
As I’m sure most of you know, Benjamin Black is John Banville’s pseudonym. John Banville writes serious novels that get nominated for the Booker Prize. John Banville felt cramped by “John Banville” and had other things he wanted to write, so he created “Benjamin Black.” Benjamin Black writes crime novels that take place in quiet 1950s Dublin. The lead character is a gloomy alcoholic (or sometimes dry-drunk) pathologist named Quirke, who, through his job, gets involved in solving all of these murders. I think there’s 5 books in the series now. They are great crime books, but they are also wonderful on the dreary gas-lamp quiet vibe of 1950s Ireland, when the Church was more monolithic than it is now, and scandals were pushed under the carpet. Some of the scandals uncovered are enormous, having to do with orphanages and Magdalene Laundries. To be honest, I find some of “John Banville” a bit ponderous. Benjamin Black though, never!
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I read this book, on average, once every other year. A masterpiece.
Washington Square
Powerful book. Every time I read it I pick up on something new. My latest re-read made me think about what a disservice it was to women to keep them helpless and under their father’s thumbs. A disservice to the entire society. Catherine IS prey. Her father senses it. He has helped to create it. He can’t protect her from the predator. He is the one who made her into prey, he and the rest of society. That last line. “As it were.” Brutal.
Cat’s Eye
While The Handmaid’s Tale is her most famous novel, and probably always will be, Cat’s Eye is her best book. One of the best books ever about girls, and what girls do to each other. Magnificent writing, too, Atwood at her very best.
A Book of Common Prayer
I think of A Book of Common Prayer as a companion piece to Democracy, even though they are not about the same things. A Book of Common Prayer takes place in a Latin American dictatorship. There are Americans wandering around, CIA operatives. A coup is imminent. But coups are so rote in this fictional country that everyone just sits around wondering who will win. It’s a pretty bleak book, written in the classic Didion style, cold, remote, slightly spooky, with lots of repetition, a stylistic “tic” that maybe she overdoes a little bit here, but I love this novel.
The Children of the Arbat
This was banned in Russia for many years, and you can see why. It tells the story of “the Arbat”, the Greenwich Village of Moscow, in the 1920s and early 30s. The Revolution is over, and it’s not yet clear, at the outset, what that will mean on the ground. Surely life will go on as before, yet better, with more opportunities. But abysses start to open. The bohemian group of students, artists, loafers and partiers starts to break apart, forced to by the increasing paranoia, the insistence that you join the apparatus of the State. Meanwhile, far off, is Stalin, in his office, getting shaved, smoking his pipe, making decisions. It is a brilliant portrait of an unknowable man, the most unknowable dictator in modern history. He controlled history to such an extent that it is difficult to find accurate information on him, although historians have done a pretty good job piecing together his timeline. However, the timeline takes us only so far. Plenty of people went through similar things at that time, and did not become a Stalin. What made Stalin Stalin? Think before you answer. One of his distinguishing characteristics that sets him apart from other dictators was that he had patience. He could wait for YEARS before he got his revenge. He never forgot a slight. He nursed grudges for decades, biding his time until he saw the opportunity to strike. Rybakov’s portrait of Stalin is incredibly convincing. The book ends with the murder of Kirov. You feel a swoon of despair. All of the people you just read about, came to care about over 500 pages, will probably die.
The Redemption of George Baxter Henry
It’s so hilarious that a couple of times I had to put the book down to get my guffaws out of my system, frightening my cat and my neighbors. There’s an Elvis Presley sub-plot too!
The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye
I adore the title story of this short collection of fairy tales. A middle-aged academic accidentally releases a djinn. The djinn hangs out in her hotel room. They talk. They connect. It slayed me the first time I read it. I may have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but I stand by my opinion.
The Country Girls Trilogy
I like the first installment of the trilogy the best, but they’re all wonderful. Another great novel about what it is like with girls, and what female friendship is really like. Country girls. Move to Dublin. Romances. Trouble. 1950s. Hugely controversial at the time, condemned by the church, books burned on parish grounds, etc. I know, girls having fun and shaving their legs and talking about boys is so scandalous. O’Brien is a giant in Irish literature.
Out of Sight: A Novel
God, it’s so damn good. I never get sick of it.
Bluets
A guy I had a crush on a couple of years ago mentioned this was his favorite book that had come out recently. Because I am a good crush-er, I picked it up and read it. If I explained it, it would sound pretentious, or writerly, or like an extended and self-indulgent writing exercise. It is not any of that. Give it a shot. It defies description.
The Secret Sharer
The captain of a ship in the Indian Ocean takes a castaway on board, out of a clear flat sea, and hides the castaway in his cabin. It strikes the captain that this person seems … very much like himself … although he can’t quite put his finger on it. The whole world starts to destabilize, sanity starts to shatter. It’s such a short story, but huge in scope.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
A glorious show-off of a book with a great plot about the early days of comic books in New York City, as well as the Jewish immigrant experience. I’ve been a Chabon fan since his first novel, The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh
1984
Another book I read, on average, every couple of years. “Newspeak” is alive and well right now, and neither side – left or right – is off the hook as far as I’m concerned. All of them speak in a pre-programmed language, filled with shorthand, meant to obscure the truth, rather than reveal it. Orwell was more prophetic than even he knew, and he knew a lot. Seen as a traitor, still, in many circles, because he criticized something an ideology that emerged from the Left. He understood something that very few people “got” until it was too late: that Socialism was never about handing over the power of production to the people. It was ALWAYS about consolidating power into the hands of a very small elite caste. From the get-go, it was a power-grab. The revolution was betrayed. But those at the top always knew the truth. That’s the secret in the “secret book” in 1984, and that was the thing nobody wanted to look at, or deal with, in real life. They still don’t. After the recent election, a lot of people were re-reading 1984 or – in some cases – reading it for the first time. One young woman wrote an article about how misogynistic it was and my reaction is: You are a very silly woman, and you don’t deserve Orwell.
Light Years
Salter died recently, and the outpouring of love/affection for this writer was truly heartwarming. He did not win many prizes, he did not make a lot of money with his novels, but he is a master of the form. Nobody does with prose what he does. You can’t even believe it works. There are sequences in A Sport and a Pastime that just add up to short sentences of description. The flowers were blue, the tea was cold, the sun was warm. But in his hands, these things shimmer with life, with depth, with meanings beyond meanings. It is deceptively simple, what he does. I’m putting Light Years on this list because it was my introduction to Salter. I read it at the age of 23. I was too young for it. I resisted the book. I almost didn’t even understand it, even though the writing, as I mentioned, is clear as crystal. I was talking with a friend on Facebook about this and he had an identical experience with Light Years. It wasn’t until we got older that we re-visited the book and felt its power, understood its implications. Not for the faint-hearted.
Play It As It Lays
Has there ever been a writer who gets California like she does? Steinbeck, but his California is different, his California is the one that existed before all the orange groves were cut down, before the freeways came in, before everything. Play It as It Lays is a brilliant Los Angeles novel, and the voice of the narrator is cold as ice, bleak as a desert. Nothing will grow there. The voice is flat, knowing, and traumatized. It’s off-putting. There are sequences about driving on the freeways that I didn’t understand until I got into “the zone” once during one of my times in L.A. It was a moment when I suddenly understood the appeal of those gigantic writhing roads, of going as fast as you can, of fleeing, of going going going – ocean on one side, mountains in front of you, desert on the other side. The ultimate border-land. This is a chilly piece of work, which haunts you long after you close the book.
LaBrava
This might be my favorite of his (although any time I read any of his books, I think, “No. THIS one is my favorite.”) But there’s something about this one, the main character, the way it takes place practically all in one location, its feel for the locale, its eccentricities, the people who live there, all the different characters … this book is a dream.
Revolutionary Road
BRUTAL. I re-watched the film and am slightly shocked that Winslet got all the accolades. She’s fine, but it’s nothing she hasn’t done before (and her American accents never ring quite true for me). She’s good, don’t get on me about this … but for me it is LEO’S performance that is the real stunner. One of his very best (and that’s saying something.) This is a very difficult book to adapt, since it’s so incredibly detailed (the look on her face as the curtain falls in the first scene takes 20 pages to describe), and there’s so much subtlety in the interactions. But Leo understands the book and Leo understands it’s about men, and the loneliness/rage of men, the SILLINESS of men who think they’re special (even though the world has said, unanimously, “You are not special”), the sheer boredom of life when you can’t settle down and just enjoy where you’re at. This book is so upsetting.
The recommendations are always appreciated. It’s funny I’ve read quite a few on this list probably based upon your recommendations. Tana French for sure. Since I love Bach and Glenn Gould is one my favorite Bach interpreters I think I’ll give The Gold Bug variations a shot. Thanks again.
Dg – you’re welcome! I won’t lie – The Gold Bug Variations was over my head in a lot of ways – but I imagine someone familiar with Glenn Gould and the music in an indepth way – will understand how the book’s structure mirrors the structure of that piece of music. And then the whole DNA structure part of the book ALSO mirrors the Goldberg Variations. It’s dizzying. I imagine people into crossword puzzles, puzzles of any kind, would really dig this book.
any good books to recommend?
Well, I waded into Richard Ford territory recently…Canada was very good and had one of the all time great first lines. I’m also a pretty faithful Philip Roth reader so one of those is always nearby and American Pastoral was the best of his in my opinion. I’m not sure I’ve heard you speak about him… Definitely an acquired taste.
As far as The Gold Bug Variations goes, if it gets too far out there I’ll do what I always do in that situation… Put it aside and bang through an Elmore Leonard book.
Thanks, Sheila! Have you read the Patrick Melrose novels? (Just wondering about your opinion of them.) Also, “Bartleby” changed my life. I was a young college dropout working as a scrivener–a legal secretary in Providence. I started to notice that I was talking to myself quite a bit, and not in a happy way, and my hair started to fall out, but I didn’t take any of that seriously–not as seriously as the fact that I my days typing letters (cover letters, interrogatories, blah blah blah) that no one, literally no one, would ever read, letters and documents that existed just to be filed away. And then I read “Bartleby.” Can you imagine!! It was that moment Hector talks about (in The History Boys) when a writer long dead reaches out and takes your hand. And then I stopped doing that work and went back to college and started writing and had a life. Melville is my hero.
Oh, also…I’ve finally gotten around to reading Bleak House, and in an odd way. Because I do online tutoring work every day, my eyes are generally too shot to read for pleasure, so I broke down and got an audio book for Bleak House. Now, I seldom drive long distances–just 5 or so 7-minute drives per day, most days. So I’ve been listening to BH in just those increments. And it’s so fabulous! I’m getting near the end now… Inspector Bucket is the original Columbo! I hate Smallweed and !@%# Skimpole with an outrage that daily threatens to land me in a ditch. Who knew that reading this way could be so delightful?
Ha – Bleak House in 7-minute increments. That is amazing!
There are so many great characters in that book. As well as that ridiculous lawsuit. So funny (and awful).
Jincy – Oh my God, that Barltleby story! I just got total goosebumps. Unbelievable.
I am so happy that story came into your life at that time.
and hmm, Patrick Melrose – I don’t know those. What are they like?
5 short novels by Edward St Aubyn. You can look him up–he was raised by upper-class wolves (details horrific) and dealt with it in fiction, which allowed him to settle scores and enter into the points of view of the wolves. To me, this is why fiction almost always (of course there are exceptions) beats memoir. I’ve never read anything like it. Breathtaking wit, savagery, nothing off limits. It’s kind of hard to take, actually, and I haven’t read them all–the first (Never Mind) was enough for me for the time being. Still, it’s an experience. Also, he flits from p.o.v. to p.o.v. like a butterfly, breaking all the rules, yet the structure is essentially traditional, which is jarring and interesting. You might take a look.
Wow. These sound absolutely incredible. Thank you.
//I was forced to read it in high school and found it a chore. . . . Then, in my 30s, I re-read it again and the top of my head blew off.//
It’s always funny, and amazing, to me how much some things can change to us over time. How age and experience can drastically change our interpretation or understanding of a story or event. (Or, say, how not being forced to read something for school can change your attitude towards it.) It’s why I never tire of re-reading some of my favourite books. The truly great ones only get better every time.
That being said…I’ve never actually read Moby Dick. For an English Lit major, I’ve somehow managed to avoid reading many of the classics. I’ve meant to get around to it eventually, but I’m still devoting much of my time to reading “trash.” I read nothing but horror, sci-fi/fantasy, and mysteries before Uni and I dove right back into them after graduation.
I’ve also only read one Atwood novel in my life, which for a Canadian English Lit major is probably nothing short of astounding.
//People who lump Charlotte together with Jane Austen can’t have understood either writer. What do they have in common? Similar era and vaginas. That’s it. Jane Eyre is OUT THERE.//
This has always annoyed me, too. That, and how they tend to be dismissed as shallow romantic fantasies that only silly women enjoy. I love Austen, I love Jane Eyre, but they are very different things. And shallow romantic fantasies does not describe either.
May –
// It’s why I never tire of re-reading some of my favourite books. The truly great ones only get better every time. //
It’s so true. I made it a point to re-read all of those books from high school at one point or another – just to sort of re-claim them and make up my own mind about them. I thought “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” was a big bore at 14. As an adult I can’t believe I ever thought that book was boring! It’s riveting, it’s a page-turner, it’s horrible!! I mean, I’m glad I was exposed to it early – it’s always good to be introduced to these great books, etc. – but I’m really glad I re-read it.
// I’ve also only read one Atwood novel in my life, which for a Canadian English Lit major is probably nothing short of astounding. //
Ha! Yeah, really!! Which one have you read?
I kind of stopped reading her along the way – I read The Robber Bride, and it was okay – but totally missed this whole third wave of her career – with Alias Grace and Oryx & Crake. I tried with Alias Grace, but just couldn’t get into it. I stopped pretty much with Cat’s Eye. An amazing book!
// That, and how they tend to be dismissed as shallow romantic fantasies that only silly women enjoy. I love Austen, I love Jane Eyre, but they are very different things. And shallow romantic fantasies does not describe either. //
Absolutely. There were definitely silly Gothic romances being written at that time – and all of those books are now forgotten. But not their books.
When the Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice came out (which I did not see, because I can’t deal with KK) – there was some article I read (can’t remember where) about the Bronte-fication of Austen. It was pretty funny. Like Bronte is the one with violent weather and wild moors and thunder crashes. Bronte’s people certainly GO inside from time to time, but the wild world of nature is always more powerful. Jane Austen’s world is interior, neat, a world of bustling dresses and gigantic rooms, and perfectly manicured gardens. Nothing wrong with either vision – but they are two different things, different views of life, love, the world. Bronte’s may be the more “sexy” – but Austen has her own thing going on. Seeing KK run across some wet field with rain on her face in the Pride & Prejudice trailer – I was like: No. Stop it.
Surfacing is the only Atwood novel I’ve read. And only because it was one of the novels we read in a Canadian Literature course I took in university. So many stories about the vastness of the wilderness and frontier life. Just, so many.
She is definitely an author that I’ve, unfairly, developed a prejudice against. She has such a high profile in the Canadian cultural scene that the my inner rebel resists picking up her work. The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the few that I’ve ever seriously considered reading…and your recommendation has made that event much more likely!
RE: the KK P&P. Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion are my two favourite Austen novels, and two of my all-time favourite books in general, so I tend to seek out adaptations of both. I did not like the Keira Knightley version. Her Lizzy was fine, but the tone of the film was off. It took itself far too seriously. So moody and emotional. No humour. I can definitely see how someone would say it was Bronte-esque. I think I was actually offended that Mr. & Mrs. Bennet had a somewhat decent marriage in the film. Scandalized, I tell you!
May – what would I do without your hilarious gifs?
I get so excited when I see a link in one of your comments. I know it’s going to be hilarious.
and yes, I can totally see how Canadians must be like – ENOUGH ALREADY.
// I think I was actually offended that Mr. & Mrs. Bennet had a somewhat decent marriage in the film. //
Ha!!
Aw, thank you so much! Though, I really don’t need the encouragement! Must. Keep. Self. Restrained.
But I just can’t help myself…
Hi May. If the link was supposed to go to Margaret Atwood talking about Alice Munro’s Nobel, YouTube isn’t letting it stream in the US.
Never be restrained May. It’s too entertaining.
I think it’s hilarious that a Youtube clip about Alice Munro/Atwood isn’t allowed to be shown in the US. Why is that so funny to me?
Ohhhh Canada. Terre de nos aieux!
… and again, with the perfect link. I don’t even need to see it to know that!
OMG. It actually has a region restriction? That is so dumb.
It’s a clip from a Canadian comedy show, This Hour Has 22 Minutes. I think this link might be unrestricted, since it isn’t from the CBC’s page. Of course, even if it does work, my timing off now. Way to ruin my joke, CBC!
//I think it’s hilarious that a Youtube clip about Alice Munro/Atwood isn’t allowed to be shown in the US. Why is that so funny to me?//
Because it’s a perfect example of the Canadian art and culture scene: invisible to everyone but us?
LOL!!!!
May, the link worked. And it rocked!
“I call them chapters, and combine them into books for grownup.”
Mutecypher — oh, good! I’m glad it worked this time :-)
May – finally watched. That is so so funny. The wig. The passive-aggressiveness. “You finally made it. In Sweden.”
HA.
//For an English Lit major, I’ve somehow managed to avoid reading many of the classics. I’ve meant to get around to it eventually, but I’m still devoting much of my time to reading “trash.” I read nothing but horror, sci-fi/fantasy, and mysteries…//
May, I am an English Lit major, as well, and am glad to hear you say you are devoted to your “trash” reading – me too. I read mostly mysteries, historical mysteries if I can find them, but I draw the line at historical romances. My children accuse me of reading the “bodice rippers”, but actually I don’t. I also read some sci fi, a little fantasy, and I love a good spy thriller. Humor is also a key element for me. I, like Sheila, was forced to read all the classics in school, but I have managed to avoid all ‘serious’ literature since then, which means I haven’t read any of this list if it wasn’t considered a classic before 1980. As for the changing tastes as one ages, I don’t think I could ever love Moby Dick, but I initially couldn’t care less about Pride and Prejudice which now ranks as an all time favorite of mine. I think its the subtle humor I just didn’t appreciate back then. My literary, movie, and TV preferences are purely entertaining. I don’t go for deep psycho dramas. I get enough of that in my own life. LOL…
May, It is funny that your reaction to Canadian cultural literature at University was so similar to my response to the Southern cultural literature at University of Mississippi. They will probably come take my degree away for saying this, but Faulkner… If I have to sweat through anymore hot, dusty backroads, smelling stale urine, whisky, perfume, sex, and human despair I think I will vomit. The man can paint with words, I just don’t ever want to see that picture again. The only Atwood book I’ve ever read, Blind Assassin, made me feel very much the same, but in a cold, depressed, Canadian sort of way. (Not my actual experience of Canada at all.)
As for the great romantic novels, IMHO scew all the Brontes and give me Tess of the d’Ubervilles!
My 3 daughters have recently graduated from the girls’ school that I attended where they have not changed the required reading list much in 1/2 a century. It has been fun experiencing their reactions and feelings about the same books. Some things just don’t change.
Ok, Sheila, I feel challenged. I will have to try some of these newer ones because I trust your judgement.
Oooh! You’re a Tess fan!!
That was another one I slogged through in high school – found it boring – and when I re-read it I was like, “This is GREAT. What was my problem back then?”
Ah, grumpy adolescence.
// The only Atwood book I’ve ever read, Blind Assassin, made me feel very much the same, but in a cold, depressed, Canadian sort of way. //
hahahaha
I like early Atwood best. Bodily Harm is one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read – so maybe that one is too psycho to start with. Handmaid’s Tale, though – it’s good freaky dystopian stuff.
Funny about Faulkner. The Southern literature tradition is so so strong in the US – he of course being the Grand Pooh-Bah – but there is just something that region brings to the table that is so important – they lead the way! I mean, Tennessee Williams, for starters.
I wonder who, currently, is really “writing” the American South. Nancy Lemann – whose Lives of the Saints counts as a Southern novel (it was re-issued in a series called “Voices from the South”) – and I put it on the list here – writes about the South in a delirious comedic way. New Orleans, in her book, is filled with eccentrics, men in seersucker suits who quote ancient Greek in a dreamy tone, tons of drunken shenanigans (all told lovingly and humorously – she is a very kind writer) and lots and lots of atmosphere. But mainly comedy. Nobody seems to know who she is, though, and she’s only written four novels in 30 years. Or five.
But I wonder who is picking up the torch now of that tradition? I’m probably missing someone, as I scan my memory banks.
//For an English Lit major, I’ve somehow managed to avoid reading many of the classics. I’ve meant to get around to it eventually, but I’m still devoting much of my time to reading “trash.” I read nothing but horror, sci-fi/fantasy, and mysteries…//
I am an English Lit major, as well, and am glad to hear you say you are devoted to your “trash” reading – me too. I read mostly mysteries, historical mysteries if I can find them, but I draw the line at historical romances. My children accuse me of reading the “bodice rippers”, but actually I don’t. I also read some sci fi, a little fantasy, and I love a good spy thriller. I, like Sheila, was forced to read all the classics in school, but I have managed to avoid all ‘serious’ literature since then, which means I haven’t read any of this list if it wasn’t considered a classic before 1980. As for the changing tastes as one ages, I don’t think I could ever love Moby Dick, but I initially couldn’t care less about Pride and Prejudice which now ranks as an all time favorite of mine. I think its the subtle humor I just didn’t appreciate back then. My literary, movie, and TV preferences are purely entertaining. I don’t go for deep psycho dramas. I get enough of that in my own life. LOL…
If you read the descriptions of the books on the list, many of them are hugely entertaining. (Including the classics. All of Dickens is the purest “entertainment” that there is. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, too – which I didn’t include – the definition of a page-turner!)
and in re: Moby Dick. It’s certainly well worth a try, before you decide whether or not you love it.
It’s funny – I was just thinking of reading Pride and Prejudice again – it’s been a while. I love that book! That wasn’t one I was forced to read in high school – I don’t think we had to read any Austen. Bronte’s Wuthering Heights was part of the curriculum but not Austen.
I didn’t mean to post the first part of my comment twice, sorry. Tess – great minds think alike! What you said about sharing Master and Commander series with your dad really resonated with me. My dad just passed in June and for the last several years he was unable to read due to eye problems so I would help him download audio books. He had already exhausted the M&C series, but always asked me for Dickens, Austen, and any of the Bronte’s. He loved the romantic movies of the 30s and
*40s too. Posting fail today, sorry.
I’m so sorry to hear about your father, Melanie!
I know, too, that feeling of having the things they loved while here still hold all that power of the memory of them. I still struggle with that.
My condolences!
Thanks, Sheila. On Southern writers I stand by John Grisham. Some would argue his legal thrillers aren’t true Southern lit, but ‘lawyuhs’ are as southern as iced tea. Just ask that little ol’ mockingbird. Speaking of that I am anxious to read Harper Lee’s sequel, “To Set a Watchman”. I hear its very controversial. Atticus, poster boy for civil rights, turns out to be a bitter racist in old age. My, my there’s some complex Southern characterization for you!
I will try the Nancy Lemann book, it sounds like I would enjoy it. Wild horses will never drag me back to TOM&TS. For a man in a boat I pick The Odyssey, there’s a classic. BTW, did I ever tell you my grandmother was a librarian? She lived to be 98 and was the most well read woman I ever knew. Thanks again, Sheila.
Of course – John Grisham – how could I forget??
Yes, I’ve been following along with the Harper Lee controversy and am not sure if I will read it – but probably will eventually.
And good for your grandmother!! :)
So sorry to hear about your father, Melanie.
Thanks, Sheila. On today’s leading Southern writer I stand by John Grisham. Some would argue his legal thrillers aren’t true Southern lit, but ‘lawyuhs’ are as southern as iced tea. Just ask that little ol’ mockingbird. Speaking of that I am anxious to read Harper Lee’s sequel, “To Set a Watchman”. I hear its very controversial. Atticus, poster boy for civil rights, turns out to be a bitter racist in old age. My, my there’s some complex Southern characterization for you!
I will try the Nancy Lemann book, it sounds like I would enjoy it. Wild horses will never drag me back to TOM&TS. For a man in a boat I pick The Odyssey, there’s a classic. BTW, did I ever tell you my grandmother was a librarian? She lived to be 98 and was the most well read woman I ever knew. Thanks again, Sheila.
Double posting fail, AGAIN! So sorry.
//It’s funny – I was just thinking of reading Pride and Prejudice again – it’s been a while. I love that book! That wasn’t one I was forced to read in high school – I don’t think we had to read any Austen. Bronte’s Wuthering Heights was part of the curriculum but not Austen.//
And I’m now half-way through a re-read of Persuasion! “Well, maybe I should finally give The Handmaid’s Tale a try–oh, hey Persuasion is already on my ereader!”
I was forced to read P&P in high school. I actually loved it right away. I vaguely remember writing a paper on P&P and Persuasion. That was the first time I ever fell in love with a book I was forced to read.
I didn’t read Wuthering Heights until university. Sadly, it did not win me over. I just disliked very character. Every single one. That is a book I will definitely have to reread at some point, to see if my opinion has changed.
// That was the first time I ever fell in love with a book I was forced to read. //
I love stories like that!
I re-read Withering Heights a while back – a couple years ago – I had thrilled to it in high school. But as an adult, my main reaction was: “What a bunch of narcissists!!!” It is Love as the Most Selfish Thing in the world.
Bronte was not a “civilized” person – not meaning that as an insult really – but she did not get along with people, and liked nature/animals better.
Her vision of those two people – Catherine and Heathcliff – looks VERY different to me as an adult than it did when I was a selfish romantic adolescent.
Which is kind of interesting, in and of itself.
//And I’m now half-way through a re-read of Persuasion! //
Yay for Jane Austen! I was actually thinking of her the other day. My experience was a little different–one summer when I was between colleges, I got a job bussing tables in Yellowstone NP. There was no tv reception there, and very little in the way of movies, so I decided to go on a “classics” binge. The Austen book I picked up was “Emma”–and it very nearly ended my experiment right there. I found it soooo tedious, and I can’t really explain why. Maybe the likeability of the characters? Maybe the absorption into this tiny little world? I don’t know.
Years later, and with trepidation, I read “Pride and Prejudice”. This time she completely won me over, and I’ve been reading and re-reading her books ever since.
Except for “Emma”. I re-read it one time after my P & P epiphany. Still tedious. To me, anyway.
Melanie — //They will probably come take my degree away for saying this, but Faulkner… If I have to sweat through anymore hot, dusty backroads, smelling stale urine, whisky, perfume, sex, and human despair I think I will vomit. The man can paint with words, I just don’t ever want to see that picture again.//
LOL!
“Trash” is just too much fun. I will not give it up! I don’t know if university helped or hindered my prejudice, but I was never able to gain a real interest in much modern critically acclaimed literature. I studied a variety subjects in university–Canadian Lit, American Lit, surrealism, a whole class devoted to Chekhov–but it was really only the Classics (like The Iliad) and Shakespeare that stuck with me. (And 18-19th century literature, I guess. I enjoy the work, I don’t remember being terribly interested in the course.) I started taking more and more ancient lit courses, which is partly how I avoided many of the more modern classics.
Awesome list. Time to go shopping.
Yeah!! Next up – non-fiction. I REALLY look forward to hearing your favorites there!
Dear Sheila, thank you for this. I am a list person and I would heed any and all of your listed recommendations on anything! As a teacher I don’t read much during the year but come summer I eat books for breakfast. Maybe a movie list will follow someday!
Thanks! It was fun to put together. I’ll put together a non-fiction one at some point.
Not as into movie lists. I write about movies enough. :)
I haven’t read many of these books, but the ones I have…wow!
On Moby Dick: I found myself, oddly enough, almost being disappointed when the book returned to the “story”, so compelling were all those chapters upon chapters upon chapters on whale lore.
On 11/22/62: I couldn’t believe how good that book was. I sensed something magic going on fairly early in the story — you know that feeling when you’re watching a really good baseball pitcher on a REALLY special night? About the third inning you start thinking, “Huh, that dude’s really got good stuff tonight!”? I had the same feeling about this book. I think the detail that I first noticed as being something else was the revelation that the diner owner has a friggin’ time portal in his basement, and what does he think to do with it? Use it as a constant source of really cheap ground beef, so he can keep his burger price down. And yeah, there really ARE people who would think like that if they found a time portal in the basement of their business…but King realized that there are people who think like that and spun them into his tale. Amazing.
Missing Reels is high on my To Read list. I can’t wait! Her blog is SO terrific. I wish I knew half as much about Star Wars as she does about every film ever.
I now aspire to make a future edition of this list myself!
Jaquandor:
// I found myself, oddly enough, almost being disappointed when the book returned to the “story”, so compelling were all those chapters upon chapters upon chapters on whale lore. //
Me too! Once I got into the rhythm of the thing, and gave up clinging to any kind of conventional plot (not to mention narrator – is it first person? Well, yes “Call me Ishmael” – but then it seems to switch, with no warning). Anyway, I think the whale-parts are what make the book what it is – if you removed them, thinking they were unnecessary or extraneous, you would kill the book’s magic.
I love how he gives the lesson about this or that part of the whale – or the whaling industry – and then, usually in the final paragraph, he goes for the metaphor. And because he is Melville, it is always BRILLIANT.
// Use it as a constant source of really cheap ground beef, so he can keep his burger price down. //
Hahahaha. I hadn’t thought of that. Yes: great detail.
I think you’ll love Missing Reels. It’s super fun!
Would love to read your list!
Wow, Sheila, such a list! I’m tempted to leave notes about all of the books on here that I’ve read, and ask about the ones I haven’t, but I will restrain myself. It’s so true, I think, that certain books, encountered at the right time in our lives, have the power to help us define ourselves and change the way we see the world. “To each reader his or her book” is one of the tenets of librarianship for a reason, after all. (As a librarian, I know I don’t read as many books as I should, or even than I want to–but oh well. Lists like this one help me in that regard, too!)
A couple of notes, anyway:
“Cat’s Eye” was almost too painful for me, too close to the bone, but cathartic in a way. I like Atwood’s work though–my favorite, I think, is “Alias Grace”. It combines so many of my obsessions: real life mystery, a possibly unreliable narrator, and a mind-blowing historical setting.
“Then We Came to the End”–Yes! I don’t see this one referenced very often, so I loved seeing it here. A co-worker gave it to me after she had read it with her book group, which hadn’t appreciated it. What struck me the most about this one was the melancholy of the ending. People in jobs form these cohesive groups, but the nature of work is that the group is always shifting members as people leave and jobs end. The “we” never lasts.
I could keep going, but I’ll stop now. Thank you, again, for this list–my own “to read” list just expanded!
Barb – Yay for librarians!
// I’m tempted to leave notes about all of the books on here that I’ve read, and ask about the ones I haven’t, but I will restrain myself. //
Well, of course you know I would love to hear your thoughts! :)
// “Cat’s Eye” was almost too painful for me, too close to the bone, but cathartic in a way. //
Yes, me too. I lost a very very good female friend – my best friend from age 6 to 18 – and it was a cataclysmic loss. I never really recovered, to be honest. Cat’s Eye stirred all that up – and I had thought I had gotten past it. (It’s hard too – and weird – because my former best friend is now world-famous. Not even kidding. I mean it sounds dumb to say, but it’s true. She is famous around the world. She actually mentioned me, recently, although not by name, in an interview. I was her “childhood best friend.” and we did this and that together. It’s truly strange – and also was one of the reasons Cat’s Eye struck a nerve, because the narrator had become a famous artist so there was that visibility factor too. There was one very strange day when an article about my childhood friend appeared on the home page of a website where one of my reviews was also featured – our pieces were, like, centimeters apart. It gave me a weird shiver. Like, wow, there we are together.)
I’m not sure if you remember the final scene of the book – where the narrator is on the plane and watching two old ladies sitting together, giggling, making bathroom jokes, having a good time. There’s a line that is almost too painful to type out – something like: “This is what I miss, Cordelia. Two old women sipping tea.”
BAH.
I just couldn’t get into Alias Grace, although it did seem right up my alley – maybe I should give it another try!
And I’m so psyched you know Then We Came to the End!! And you’re right about the melancholy – the closeness of the office and the weirdness when someone “goes” – or really bad things happen, and the “we” can’t really absorb it.
plus that middle section where we suddenly see what is REALLY going on with the boss (and the “we” is dropped for that section). He’s such a fantastic writer.
Hey Sheila,
Ah, a book list. I can tell that this is already going to cost me some money! I share so many of these books in my own pantheon -Catch 22, Mating, Kavalier and Klay (with Yiddish Policeman’s Union a close second), Winters Tale, No place of Greater Safety, Owen Meany, Going after Cacciato, Master and Margarita, David Peace’s books, Richard Powers (my own favorite is A Time of Our Singing), Blood Meridian (also found the All the Pretty Horses trilogy amazing)- that I feel compelled to order some of the ones that I havent read yet (Hopeful Monsters, Missing Reels, Amongst Women, Inherent Vice) in the hope that lightning will strike. and the pile of books calling out my name grows even taller!
But with this shared sensibility in mind, let me try and reciprocate with a few titles that I think you might enjoy as well (not that you are likely short of novels on your to read list).
If you liked Serge, then I would give Grossman’s Life and Fate a try (it takes a while to get into and there are some moments that drag but there are a few set pieces that rank among the best things that I have ever read) and even if its marketed as a thriller (and its a brilliant one), Alan Furst’s Dark Star, a journey through interwar Europe through the eyes of a Pravda correspondent, with a twist involving Stalin that you will love, is well worth reading.
Two of my favorite books in the last decade -and quintessential NY books- are Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin and Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (the little boys saying for when things go terribly wrong “heavy boots” has become a family mantra).
Since you liked Ferris book as much as I did, some other novels with sheer laugh out loud moments: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk; Junot Diaz-Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Vargas Llosa- Aunt Julia and the scriptwriter.
I was sad to hear of E L Doctorow’s death last week-still love World’s Fair and Billy Bathgate. David Grossman -Book of Intimate Grammar- is a great novel about childhood (to be paired with Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha ha ha).
and there are a few one off novels (where they either never wrote another book or else never got back to these heights) that you may never have heard of- David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident (underground railroad story); David James Duncan-The Brothers K (baseball and family)- that I read ages ago and still hold up.
hopefully, maybe a few will join the list above when you redo it in a few years time. In the meantime, happy reading! Best, John
John – Hi there! I wonder what you will think of Hopeful Monsters. It’s one of the most important books to me – personally – but I know that it is not for everyone. My friend Ted – already mentioned in this post – also adores it – but we have a shared taste in gigantic intellectual idea-novels.
Thank you so much for the recommendations – I will definitely check out Dark Star. I have not read Colum McCann’s book – been meaning to. I know him a little bit – he is the awesome emcee of the Bloomsday celebration I participate in every year. It’s so much fun, and he has to organize a fluctuating cast of crazy characters (including myself) who want to participate, read this or that section, etc. He has to keep it all moving, make sure none of us get up there and read for 20 minutes, and it’s always super-fun. Last year he was involved in a horrible incident (I’m not sure if you’ve heard – he was at a hotel in Connecticut, I think for a reading or something – and he saw a violent altercation going down between a man and a woman, and he intervened. In a “Hey now, let’s all calm down way” – and the man beat him up so badly he ended up in the hospital. He’s recovered perfectly – but still – it gave me a sinking feeling when I heard that news. I have been meaning to read Let the great World Spin.)
And thanks for the other recommendations – many of them I have never heard of!
Re: At Swim-Two-Birds. Using a ridiculous Irish accent, I read it aloud to myself at the rate of 2 pages a day because I never wanted it to end.
hahahaha that’s great. It’s one of those books when you can HEAR the Irish accent in the prose.
Oh god, 11/22/63. I want to go back to read that one again but I don’t know if I can bear it. (Spoilers follow) I still remember the near physical sensation of wanting to beat on the windows yelling at the narrator during the ending, “No! Goddammit No! Stay! Stay with her, you don’t have to kill Oswald, just stay with her! Grow old with her and have a rich life in that little town!” Great book. And Mimi is still staring in judgement at me from it’s place on the bookshelf to pick it up and finish it one of these days.
Jessica – yes, I had the same reaction. I wanted him to stay with her too.
I normally don’t re-read King – for me, I tear through them, put them down, and that’s it. But I will definitely read that one again.
Mimi is a hoot. It’s also one of the angriest books I’ve ever read. But laugh-out-loud funny. Interviews with the author are terrific too – her love of wise-cracking dames and dapper gents who get all sucked into the drama – the 1930s/40s vibe – I think it’s fabulous and I think her attempt to bring that dynamic into the modern age works great.
Thank you for this, Sheila. There are several books on here I’ve not read, and this is such fine inspiration.
Thanks, DBW – was fun to put it together, scanning my shelves.
So glad to see A Prayer For Owen Meany on your list. I also read this at an intersection of my personal life where it really resonated. It was one of the first books where I realized that you could break the rules as a writer for all the best possible reasons. Having little Owen’s voice represented in ALL CAPS was genius.
//gentle gang bang between friends – what// hahahaha, I am dying. I remember reading this and having to reread because really? Did he go there? No, I must have read this wrong? Is this a thing?
// Is this a thing? //
hahahahaha Lord, I hope not.
I didn’t even question it when I first read it. But now I’m like – say what? I still love it, as crazy as that whole thing was.
The pressure to submit to Insane Rules is omnipresent. And of course in the book, everyone thinks Yossarian is insane. When he is the only sane one. One of the best examples of that is during a bombing mission, he’s freaking OUT about the gun fire coming up at their plane. He says to his fellow soldiers, “They’re shooting at me!” Other soldiers are like, basically, “Dude, it’s a war. Don’t take it personally. They’re shooting at all of us.” And he’s like, “No. They are shooting at ME. How can I not take that personally??”
Of course Heller wrote it out in a much more hilarious way. But I always loved that anecdote. Yossarian looks around him, sees insanity, and calls it out. And then everyone around him looks at him funny and says, “You are insane.”
Life rolls on.
It just occurred to me that you might like Station Eleven – have you read it? It’s about a traveling group of actors and musicians who wander through a post-apocalyptic landscape, performing Shakespeare. They need his plays, in order to hold on to some semblance of civilization. There’s also an interwoven thread about a famous actor who was an early influence on a member of the troupe. Seems like it might be of interest. I really loved the mood of it, the care the group took with each other in an uncaring world.
Anne! My sister-in-law Melody was reading it on our vacation and raving about it!! Kismet – I will definitely pick it up. It sounds fantastic!
Yeah, it was pretty great. On Possession – I can remember exactly where I was when I finished it, thinking, Oh no, it’s over! I was on some break from college, and had lazed about all morning in bed in my dad’s place in Arlington, bereft at having to get out and actually do something away from Roland and Maud.
I know. That epilogue … ugh.
But yes, Roland and Maud. I love them. I didn’t want to leave the book either. I’ve liked many of her other books – and her short stories are great – but Possession is really really special.
May I recommend Annie Proulx’s book of short stories about Wyoming, “Close Range” I think it’s called. The shoot out story is really about as perfect as it gets.
Thanks, but it’s already on the list. Look for it, it’s there. :)
I’ve read all of her work, she’s a favorite.
I saw that after posting—I’d seen Shipping News above, and missed Close Range. Cheers, FB
Quite simply, I love you. Reading your blog is like walking into a library. Imagination goes into overdrive and I itch to consume and be part of these stories. I simply don’t know how you find the time to read/watch all these things…
Julian – what a sweet comment. I really appreciate it!
and about finding the time –
I try to stagger it so after reading some huge thing, I read something short and easy. Or I have different books for different times. Like there’s the book I read before I go to bed. It’s usually huge and dense. Then there’s my commute read – which is usually light and quick. I’ll chase something heavy and dense with something light. Not easy, necessarily – but light. I love James M. Cain. And Elmore Leonard. And Patricia Highsmith – the subject matter is as dark as can be, but the style is easy. For me.
So that’s my style of reading. I usually have a couple books going at the same time and if I’m super busy with other things – like I am now – I only have about 40 minutes, all told, free a day. And that’s not only for reading. I have other shit I need to do in those 40 minutes.
I am sure we all share similar challenges!!
gosh, what a great read — loved the way you wrote about each item. Isn’t it amazing how indelible some reading experiences are? How some books form a part of our history, of us? I will never forget beginning Maria McCann’s extraordinary debut As Meat Loves Salt over dinner and being feverishly, literally unable to put it down until I finished at five in the morning. A consuming experience in all directions. The POV character is deeply sick and twisted and violent and the setting — English Civil War and the Diggers — is so vivid. I am nervous to pick it up again in case I find things to critique about it.
I had a similar experience albeit with a different set of feelings with another debut novel (save me from debut novelists who never write again, or never write so well!) by David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which is kind of Hamlet redux and features genetically enhanced dogs who can read minds which is such a ridiculous thing to say that I am again nervous to reread in case I feel foolish about the deep loving melancholy and fear it evoked in me.
I second the person on your twitter who said that this was causing them increased To Read Pile anxiety! I am glad I already have a few of these in my TBR — Possession and House of Leaves I just picked up recently at sales, kismet — and how long has Moby Dick been sitting in that pile, honestly, I am glad to hear that you and others have only really enjoyed it as you got older so I feel less like I’ve been slacking off there. Most apparent to me is a huge world of Russian literature I’m missing out on, they all sound super. I look forward to exploring many of your recs over the next hundred or so years.
Couldn’t agree with you more on some — O’Brian obviously, Heller, Blood Meridian, Wolf Hall, Waugh, Kavalier and Clay. I really tried to like 11/23/63 but it just didn’t grab me — not as bad as Under The Dome, which worked until the ending made me feel like I had just read a cheap short story in the back of a cutrate fifties sci-fi magazine. I wrote a short story with a better “OMG ALIENS” twist when I was 13. It won a prize and I am pretty sure I basatardised it from somewhere else anyway. No, for my money the best King of the last 20 years is the lean machine Cell. Superb. Also loved The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Survivalist stories are obviously more my thing.
I will try to curb my running mind now by saying that I don’t know if I could write a similar list without some deep thought on the difference between favourite and recommended. There’s a term in fanfic culture, id-fic, that signifies the kind of stories that really mash on your pleasure buttons and basically bypass the ego entirely and are often super out-there. I have to say, in terms of pro fiction, it’s not really the same thing but the first thing I saw when I looked over at my bookshelf was Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles (the first three only thank you!) that I read when I was probably too impressionable and (you can probably tell by my breathlessness) still make me thrill to the idea of hundreds of improbably beautiful women and men stalking around Cotswald fields in the mud and having ridiculous sex and phonetically-transcribed conversations in dangerous high heels and sleek jodhpurs and on piles of money etc etc. So I think my list might be a bit sillier than yours.
Jessie – Oooh, okay, so you’ve mentioned some books on here that I now feel compelled to check out. Any book that keeps someone up until 5 in the morning until you can finish it is something special.
// I am again nervous to reread in case I feel foolish about the deep loving melancholy and fear it evoked in me. //
I so know what you mean. I have a similar feeling about Geek Love. That first experience was so primal – it’s a part of my life now – will re-visiting the book somehow … mute all of that?
And agree with you about the silly ending of Under the Dome. I think I blocked it out AS it was happening. Like – what? After all that, THIS? No!!!
I love your thoughts on id-fic. Wow – I had never heard the term before. But I have experienced that. To be honest, there was one piece of Destiel fic I stumbled on that bypassed my intellect and went straight to the core of me – I think that’s the sensation you’re describing. I’m not even a Destiel person – but this one fic writer has a “take” on that relationship (and is also a fabulous writer) that I am compelled to read whatever she (I think it’s a she) wrote. One in particular. It has nothing to do with what is actually onscreen in the show – it’s completely made up – but it expressed something very powerful about sexuality and repression and the need for soft-ness in life – I don’t know. I finished reading it and felt like I had to come back to earth. I’m not a huge fanfic person, but I am grateful I discovered this one writer. She’s whimsical, too – she has a sense of humor. And like you say, her stuff is out there.
The only comparison I can make in professional fiction is some of the books I encountered as a teenager. The YA stuff of my day. Ellen Emerson White’s books – with horrible titles like “Romance Is a Wonderful Thing” and “Life Without Friends.” But these books, read when I was 15, 16, were so pleasurable, so intense, that I almost couldn’t stand it. I re-read Life Without Friends a couple years ago actually – and that intensity was no longer there for me, but I still think it’s a good book.
// hundreds of improbably beautiful women and men stalking around Cotswald fields in the mud and having ridiculous sex and phonetically-transcribed conversations in dangerous high heels and sleek jodhpurs and on piles of money //
That sounds absolutely fabulous.
// features genetically enhanced dogs who can read minds //
I kind of need to read this.
yes, you absolutely need to read Sawtelle and As Meat Loves Salt so you can tell me if it’s safe for me to read them again!!!!
How cool you found an author like that and yes, that gasping resurfacing feeling is absolutely a sign, that clarion blend of emotion and eroticism that cuts right to the core. At least it is in my experience. I think for some people it’s more about a lack of kink-shaming. But for me the right kind of narrative and themes make me go crazy. Year before last I think it was I found myself reading a fic in a different fandom. It was 500k words. I say that again, 500 000 WORDS. I knew that going in. I ran my kindle battery down over the next few days reading this dense epic dystopian mostly-well-written AU with all sorts of fucked up shit and weird characterisation like the story had hit me over the head and dragged me back to its crazy sex dungeon.
What I didn’t realise going in is that it wasn’t finished; was only two-thirds finished in fact. I was peeved at myself and the world. But it still had hold of me, and so the next weekend I READ IT AGAIN.
It’s still not finished and I refuse to look at any more chapters until she’s done because a) I can’t take it and b) the weaknesses are more apparent without the chance to sink properly into the right headspace.
Jessie – somehow I missed this comment!
// I think for some people it’s more about a lack of kink-shaming. But for me the right kind of narrative and themes make me go crazy. //
Yes. That was what it was for me – and honestly I’m not a fanfic person really at all. But this lady really spoke my language, though. Or at least her imagination was so beautiful, and so much her own, that I got swept away in it. I was like: “Ooh, her mind is fascinating AND her writing is good enough that I have to keep reading.” (She was also funny, a huge plus.)
500,000 words. Holy shit-balls.
Wow, I love everything about your rec list and all the comments, but mostly I am leaving this comment because I have never come across anyone else who has read As Meat Loves Salt!!!!
I am NOT a cryer, I do not cry in front of other people, I really don’t cry at all unless I’m completely overwrought, stressed and frustrated, but let me tell you, when I finished As Meat Loves Salt I literally sat on my floor and bawled my eyes out. So devastating.
I also still think about that boy they fished out of the pond at the beginning, just out of the blue, why did Jacob do that????!!!!
Every day there is a new reason to love your blog Sheila!!!!
I am here, late to the party, to thank you, Sheila, for the airing of grievances regarding Don Delilo. I love to read a doorstop, but it has to keep moving, and “Underworld” started redlined for forty/fifty pages then blew a gasket and sputtered for ten times that length.
Since I am here, I’ll throw some recommendations in the ring:
“Mason & Dixon” by Thomas Pynchon is a dense, poetic, ultimately comprehensible story of freedom with a keen awareness of history.
“The Man in the High Castle” by Philip K. Dick is American Dostoyevsky, in that it is a multi-threaded story in which characters are required to act based on their philosophical principles, to see their character defined by their actions, and to come to terms with their place in a story involving others.
“Infinite Jest” by D. F. Wallace is especially interesting to them that have read “The Third Policeman,” an insight for which I have to credit a friend. Although I did not make the connection myself, the structural similarity of the two books is remarkable.
Elliott – Very glad to hear your thoughts on Don DeLillo. Ugh, he drives me crazy. And yet I still read all his books. I’m a glutton for punishment. Obviously the man can write – and the opening 52 or 53 pages of Underworld are a masterpiece. Definitely deserves to be placed in the Pantheon of Great Baseball Writing, a topic dear to my heart. That opening blew me away! I still cherish it. But the rest – ugh, I honestly don’t remember any of it. I remember the desert with the abandoned planes – that was a cool scene. But it was just so ponderous and lengthy for no real point. At least with Stephen King (at the VERY least), it’s a page-turner. But I still think King’s level of description and detail and personalization leaves Don DeLillo in the dust. He describes what it is like to go back in time and drink a root beer – from a fountain – before sodas, in general, became corporatized and de-sugar-fied or whatever else – and it is some of the best sensory writing he’s ever done. And he does it in a paragraph, crystal-clear. (That’s from 11/22/1963).
ANYWAY. Onto more pleasant topics.
Thanks for the recs! I own Infinite Jest but have never read it – I admit, I find it daunting. Like, I need to be ready to have my life taken over by a book and sometimes I am not in the mood. Coincidentally, I am in the process of re-reading Consider the Lobster – and am enjoying it immensely.
I admit, too, that much of Pynchon I really struggle with. Inherent Vice was ridiculous and confusing, but so entertaining. My brother is a huge Pynchon fan so I know I definitely have some catching up to do.
And thanks for the Dick recommendation. He’s just so amazing – I have not read that one!
I made a deal with myself, after a sleepless night I spent sneaking peeks at a second story window to see if there was a dead-eyed clown hovering there, that I would never read more than one hundred pages of Stephen King in a day.
When I was, shit, ten years old, at sleep-away camp the first time, I came into a copy of “Night Shift.” I made good and goddamn sure the closet was closed well into my twenties. I think the most poignant image in that book, though, is in “The Mangler,” when the two amateur exorcists realize they are in over their heads. The moment stands pretty well for reading King: you realize it’s not what it says it is; it’s something bigger and more real, and you have to deal with that.
// after a sleepless night I spent sneaking peeks at a second story window to see if there was a dead-eyed clown hovering there, //
hahahahahahahaha
Oh no!!
Well, the good news is 11/22/1963 is not really scary like that. It’s more of an alternate history time/travel thing – taking as its theme the common (perhaps insipid) thought: “If you could go back in time and kill so-and-so” – Hitler is usually the example – “would you do it?”
In King’s book, it’s Lee Harvey Oswald.
It’s an amazing book.
But I totally understand the dead-eyed clown problem.
“The Mist” freaked me out so much I couldn’t sleep after reading it either.
DFWallace!
A few months ago I read Consider the Lobster (had enjoyed the essay previously so thought I would give the collection a try) and enjoyed it with such a deep personal satisfaction that I immediately chased it up with Brief Conversations with Hideous Men. That one I had to put down 2/3 of the way through because I found it too intense. Part of what appealed to me in Lobster, I realised, was a deep pull of recognition that when I encountered it in fictional form mirrored my own overthinking in a way that almost frightened me and certainly exacerbated any negative thoughts and feelings I happened to be having — and it was a bad personal time etc — I just had to put it down. I’ll pick it up again but I think it will have to be a short doses one. I hope to read Infinite Jest one day if it’s not too similar!
Anyway I think CtL is tremendous — the piece on McCain was so vivid and hysterical and very interesting to read at the present time.
Jessie –
// that when I encountered it in fictional form mirrored my own overthinking in a way that almost frightened me //
I really know what you mean there. He’s so FREE with his over-thinking – in a way that could be construed as validating (I find it that way sometimes), but also leads you down that maze in a way that makes you feel you can’t get out (all those footnotes!!)
But I LOVE Consider the Lobster. The McCain piece is incredible. His 9/11 piece is tremendously moving and gives a portrait of what it was like to get the news out there in the heartland, as opposed to my front-row seat in NYC.
Yesterday I read his enormous essay on language/grammar rules called “Authority and American Usage” – modeled on George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” – and I think DFW’s piece deserves the right to stand beside Orwell’s piece as an equal. These are two of the greatest essays on language that I, personally, have ever read.
I love DFW’s open nerdiness. About grammar, yes, but also about tennis, politics, America, pretty much everything.
Interestingly enough, “The End of the Tour” is out now – a movie based on David Lipsky’s book about interviewing David Foster Wallace. I saw it at Ebertfest. I was there with Glenn Kenny – who has written a bunch about DFW – he knew him personally, and edited DFW when DFW wrote pieces for Premiere (the magazine where Kenny was an editor). So imagine being in charge of editing DFW. Kenny considered DFW a friend – and so my feelings about the film are colored by talking with Glenn about it.
Glenn actually appears in one of DFW’s essays under a pseudonym – “Dick Filth” – it’s the essay in Consider the Lobster where DFW goes to the Porn Awards in Las Vegas.
Anyway, Glenn has written about DFW – and the film (he did NOT care for it) – here and also at The Guardian. I think his voice is really important right now – and if you’re a DFW fan at all – in the Guardian piece Glenn links to literary critic (and very nice guy) Chrisian Lorentzan’s piece on the mythologizing of DFW.
You can follow the links here.
http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2015/07/on-the-end-of-the-tour.html
It’s a very intense conversation – due to DFW’s suicide – the pain that those who knew him still feel – and the problem of DFW’s legacy, so soon after he passed.
All of this swirling conversation is why I picked up Consider the Lobster again.
I also love how he SLAUGHTERS John Updike.
I have nothing against John Updike, and my dad loved him, but DFW, in a review of Updike’s latest, goes to TOWN on the guy – and manages to do so in a way that shows his outrage without just being a snark-fest. Like, he uses RHETORIC correctly. Swoon.
I have a 9 hour drive down to a beach town in Northern Cal for a gathering of college friends this weekend. I thought I’d give audiobooks a try on the long drive, so I got a 11/22/63. Looking forward to it.
Yeah!! I wonder who narrates it.
Drive safe and have fun!
Craig Wasson narrates. I remember him from Body Double. Looking him up on IMDB I see that his character in that was named Jake Scully. Close enough to Jake Sully in Avatar to make me wonder if James Cameron was making a body double joke.
Ha! Sounds very probable to me.
FYI, enjoying 11/22/63. Really long read – my 17 hours of driving last weekend only got me through about half the novel.
Sheila–you mentioned “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” (love this book, too, as well as “The Haunting of Hill House”). You are probably already up on this, but have you seen this: http://www.amazon.com/Let-Me-Tell-You-Writings/dp/0812997662/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439256741&sr=1-1&keywords=let+me+tell+you+shirley+jackson
Never-before published works by Shirley Jackson, compiled in part by two of her children. Gotta say I’m drooling a bit over this one.
Barb – I know!!!! I can’t WAIT to read it – the second I heard it was coming out I got so excited!!
I thought I remembered you talking about Orwell recently. You may appreciate this. I happened to notice that this guy I know (who I used to have a huge crush on) is writing a book about Orwell. He’s a litcrit sort of person, with an *awful* writing style. Just awful, totally opaque. And he’s writing about… Orwell, of all people!
Sample sentence: “Having triangulated his relationship to Kipling, through Eliot, Orwell pentagonalizes it, we could say, situating his own response to Eliot’s reading of Kipling, in turn, between two additional readings.”
It’s beyond parody.
// “Having triangulated his relationship to Kipling, through Eliot, Orwell pentagonalizes it, we could say, situating his own response to Eliot’s reading of Kipling, in turn, between two additional readings.” //
What the HELL.
Relax with your comma use, pal. I just got totally lost in that “sentence.” Wow.
I love how he throws “pentagonalizes” in there. Dear God.
Right. That non-existent word becomes a verb. Somehow. What the eff is he talking about?
That reminds me that I haven’t checked in with one of my favorite “literary awards” in a while – the award for worst academic writing. We should submit this.
I can’t find any current Bad Academic Writing award – but I did find this hilarity.
http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm
I mean, one of the winning entries reads as follows:
“Natural history museums, like the American Museum, constitute one decisive means for power to de-privatize and re-publicize, if only ever so slightly, the realms of death by putting dead remains into public service as social tokens of collective life, rereading dead fossils as chronicles of life’s everlasting quest for survival, and canonizing now dead individuals as nomological emblems of still living collectives in Nature and History. An anatomo-politics of human and non-human bodies is sustained by accumulating and classifying such necroliths in the museum’s observational/expositional performances.”
Dude. Chill.
Basically: “The American Museum, with its exhibitions of dead remains and fossils, is a profound experience for the public, providing a sense of the vast scope of time, the way human beings lived through millennia, and the presence of death in all of our lives. These exhibits help bring the past to vivid life.”
Or whatever. I still sound like bullshit, but at least you can understand what the eff I’m talking about.
“Dead fossils” – they’re the ones that don’t try to eat your brains, right?
hahaha Oh my God, I missed that.
I am terrified of fossils that are alive.
I enjoy “anatomo-politics” and “necroliths” being in the same sentence.
The prose is so smooth and elegant, isn’t it.