Nardd needs a book to read

[Shiranui]

Temeraire.

 

[Glen]

I won't pass judgement on Murakami and Vonnegut, whom I've unfortunately never read, but I have heard many good things, here and elsewhere.

Some of my favourite authors are Poe, Joyce, Borges, Proust, Kafka, Mann, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Camus, Lovecraft, Tolkien, Hemingway, Ibsen, Faulkner, and Márquez. I've heard excellent things about, but have never read, Samuel Becket, Don DeLillo (Underworld), and Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian -- compared favourably to Moby-Dick by aesthetic prig Harold Bloom). Bloom has also highly praised fantasy author John Crowley, though, again, I have no first-hand knowledge of his works. Ursula Le Guin is another fantasy and science fiction author you may be interested in reading; her definitive work and the only one I have read is The Dispossessed, a utopian anarchist novel. Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum) deserves mention, as does Nigerian author Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart). That should suffice for now; I'll post more recommendations if they come to mind. You might consider browsing WikiProject novels to discover new authors.

ooh, i'm definitely going to show further support for things fall apart. that book was really impressive. i was on a post-collonial lit binge for awhile and while i didn't read that many different authors, achebe was my favourite.

i absolutely hated ngugi though! everyone talks about how good he is, but i could barely get through weep not, child. but this also brings me to how much i liked harold sonny ladoo. no pain like this body is one of the most heartbreaking books i've ever read.

 

[LazarusLong]

Murakami is excellent, I would certainly recommend it. Very accessible but absolutely stunning. Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is by far my favorite.

Probably the most influential book I've ever read was Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delaney. It can be a difficult read at times, but if you are the type who can get lost in prose, it is amazing. Seriously, I've never had a book emotionally impact me the way Dhalgren has.

Of the person who suggested Eco, all of his books are fun, but I think Foucalt's Pendulum stands out head and shoulders above the rest. Eco has an incredible eye for character, but he rarely demonstrates it in his other novels. Pendulum is definitely worth a read.

For lighter reading, I'm a big fan of Jonathan Lethem. Though a lot of what he writes is on the pulp-y side, Lethem is actually an extraordinarily talented writer. Fortress of Solitude means a lot to me personally, and is probably his most ambitious work, a coming-of-age story taking place in Brooklyn in the 70s. But if I were to pick an introduction to him, I would say to go with Motherless Brooklyn (yeah, he writes about Brooklyn a lot). A fun read, but you can really see his writing shine in this one.

Also, I must confess to being a huge Raymond Chandler fan. He basically invented the modern hardboiled detective story genre, but down the road everyone stole his plot elements and concepts, and totally neglected the prose that actually drove his stories.

 

[moot]

for a substantial, mindblowing book, check out House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. it will fucking wreck you. to be vague and obtuse, it's a documentary about a documentary about a house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. but it's not really about that at all.

seconding this, and showing love for your typing of house.

<strike>let's hope he doesn't get lost like a poor boy i once knew in Minos</strike>

use your imagination and pretend it's struck out

 

[LazarusLong]

Oh, and two other great ones that I'd forgotten about:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. Stunning, stunning book. Can't believe I left it out. Mexican magical realism.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. My favorite of everything that Rushdie has done. A tale about rock and roll from urban Bombay, about modern mythology, and above all else about redemption. A lot of fun.