Tuesday Media Recommendations: General Fiction (not Historical, SF, Fantasy, Mystery, or Detective)

Post your recommendations in the comments; other weeks, there'll be other posts for other genres and other formats.

UPDATE: I had originally said "general literature," and many readers interpreted that as including nonfiction. I've updated this to "general fiction"; I'll have a query for nonfiction next week.

Comments

[santamonica811]

My favorite non-fiction writer is Oliver Sacks. I'd recommend *any* of his books. But "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" is my fav, and a good introduction. Fascinating what the human brain can do when it's working well . . . and when it's working atypically.

[Drewski]

Agree on Sacks and his best book. The syphilitic woman's story really stuck with me.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

THREE books: one I read regularly, one which is an epic poem, not a book, and one scientific textbook:

1. Les Caves du Vatican by André Gide. About a very independent adolescent, about a plot to scam wealthy nobles by pretending that the Pope has been kidnapped by Freemasons, and about the philosophical implications of a gratuitous murder (as in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Like C&P it’s about a murder, but not an escapist crime-novel; more a philosophical meditation about the nature of original sin. But unlike C&P, it’s not slow and miserable; it’s a romp.

2. The scientific textbook is General Chemistry by Linus Pauling. He’s a synthetic and performative super-genius,like Richard Feynman. It’s like revisiting high-school chemistry, but ten times as much information, all ten times more entertaining. You’d never have guessed there are so many different types of chemical bonds.

3. I’m slowly getting on in Paradise Lost. I read it slowly not because it’s boring (It’s not) but because each bit is so great that I want to read it again and again before moving on. I’m still hung up on Molech’s speech in Book 2:

He ceas’d, and next him Molec, Scepter’d King
Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest Spirit
That fought in Heav’n; now fiercer by despair:
His trust was with th’ Eternal to be deem’d
Equal in strength, and rather then be less
Car’d not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or worse
He reckd not, and these words thereafter spake.

“My sentence is for open Warr: Of Wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need, not now.
For while they sit contriving, shall the rest,
Millions that stand in Arms, and longing wait
The Signal to ascend, sit lingring here
Heav’ns fugitives, and for thir dwelling place
Accept this dark opprobrious Den of shame,
The Prison of his Tyranny who Reigns
By our delay? no, let us rather choose
Arm’d with Hell flames and fury all at once
O’re Heav’ns high Towrs to force resistless sway,
Turning our Tortures into horrid Arms
Against the Torturer; when to meet the noise
Of his Almighty Engin he shall hear
Infernal Thunder, and for Lightning see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his Angels; and his Throne itself
Mixt with Tartarean Sulphur, and strange fire,
His own invented Torments. ..."

Now that is what I call elegant, to-the-point writing.

[Frank Drackman]

Linus Pauling? has some talent, might have the makings of a Varsity Chemist (didn’t finish High School, graduated with a Chemical Engineering (duh) Degree from Oregon State(That alone should get them in the Big-10, also “Beavers” is the best team name ever. Morrison & Boyds “Organic Chemistry” is still the Bible, my 1980 Edition, even looks like one. Remember in College, the Graduate Ass-istant going through the various bonds, Hydrogen, Ionic, Covalent, and some smart-ass asked
“what about the James Bond??” what a jerk, wonder whatever became of me, I mean him.
I find Milton probably as boring as you find Milton. Mrs. Milton found him boring too. He’s a little bit long-winded, he doesn’t translate very well into our generation, and his jokes are terrible.
No wonder Khan was such a meanie, sent into Exile on Ceti Alpha V and only had Paradise Lost, King Lear, Dante’s Inferno, King James Bible and Moby Dick to read.

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

I like the King James as literature -- it's the old English but concise enough not to be foggy.

[grb]

Book of Job and the Psalms are luscious literature.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Except for the part about God killing Job’s children as part of a wager with the Devil, and the bit in Psalms about gleefully smashing children’s heads against rocks (Psalm 137 starts out great but then . . . ).

[Frank Drackman]

who hasn't gleefully imagined smashing children's heads against rocks?

[grb]

captcrisis : "Except for the part about God killing Job’s children as part of a wager with the Devil... "

Well, yeah; the whole God & Satan laying down bets is a bit much. But what's appealing is human beings confronting God and demanding answers. Job's buds (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar) are having none of it. Per them, if things go wrong you must have been bad as the cause. Like one of those prosperity gospel hucksters today, everything is mechanistic cause & effect. But Job knows evil is something deeper & unfathomable and God (here) welcomes the pushback.

In one of the Arkady Renko mysteries (Wolves Eat Dogs), there's a point where one character says Noah was an "asshole". Asked why, he said this : Abraham argues with God to spare Sodom. Moses argues with God to spare those worshiping the golden calf. But God tells Noah he's gonna kill everyone and the latter just salutes. He only saves the bare minimum on his massive boat. Being a non-religious person, I like the idea of a faith where God respects a bit of resistance & accepts (some) accountability. Curious, I googled the dialog: One of the two hits was an evangelical women who said she'd never question an order from the sky above. Well, yeah; of course not.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

I’m quite sure: Job is meant to be comedic. Job himself could have been one of the Three Stooges. Everything keeps getting worse and worse for him; he tries everything he can think of, including directly asking God why it’s happening, and God answers: you wouldn’t understand, dummy! It's (the Book of Job is) a joke.

[Dan Schiavetta]

What stays with me is Mammon’s speech, which is so inspiring that it detracts from the narrative.

[SRG2]

We had "Samson Agonistes" as a set book for A-levels (national exams in England pre-university). I liked it from the very beginning. Apparently my English teacher went into the teachers' common room afterwards and said, "I've been teaching Milton for thirty years and I've finally found a student who likes him".

[SRG2]

An old FB post of mine: Paradise Lost

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“(not Historical, SF, Fantasy, Mystery, or Detective)”

Hmmm…I’ll have to think if I can recommend something within those restrictions.

I can't say Barbara Tuchman because that's historical.

I can't say Ambrose Bierce because lots of that is historical or fantasy.

Dickens' Tale of Two Cities is the only book I actually enjoy based on its being assigned in school, but that's historical.

Maybe I can come up with something later.

[SRG2]

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis - one of the great black comedies. The very good film adaptation captured some of it, but nowhere near all.
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome - still one of the funniest novels ever written
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh. A satire of English society akin in some respects to Candide. (Also made into an entertaining film).

[Ridgeway]

Decline and Fall may be the funniest book I ever read. It probably loses out to Confederacy of Dunces, but not by much.

Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis) and Scoop (Waugh) are tied for third.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Another good Waugh satire is “Vile Bodies”.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

I swear by SCOOP.

[Ridgeway]

Up to a point, Lord Copper.
...

His memoirs of the six months he spent amongst the Patagonian Indians, entitled, "Waste of Time."

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

I like this bit (although it’s dreadfully racist; you have to cut Waugh a break on that, as a general thing. I usually remind myself that he seems to hate White people just as much as he hates Black people, but in different ways):

William knocked and the door was opened by the Negro whom he had seen the evening before in Hyde Park. The features, to William’s undiscriminating eye, were not much different from those of any other Negro, but the clothes were unforgettable.

‘Can I see the Ishmaelite consul-general, please?’

‘Are you from the Press?’

‘Yes, I suppose in a way I am.’

‘Come in. I’m him. As you see we are a little understaffed at the moment.’

The consul-general led him into what had once been the servants’ hall. Photographs of Negroes in uniform and ceremonial European dress, hung on the walls. Samples of tropical produce were disposed on the table and along the bookshelves. There was a map of Ishmaelia, an eight piece office suite and a radio. William sat down. The consul-general turned off the music and began to talk.

‘The patriotic cause in Ishmaelia,’ he said, ‘is the cause of the coloured man and of the proletariat throughout the world. The Ishmaelite worker is threatened by corrupt and foreign coalition of capitalist exploiters, priests and imperialists. As that great Negro Karl Marx has so nobly written…’ He talked for about twenty minutes. The black-backed, pink-palmed, fin-like hands beneath the violet cuffs flapped and slapped. ‘Who built the Pyramids?’ he asked. ‘Who invented the circulation of the blood?… Africa for the African worker, Europe for the African worker, Asia, Oceania, America, Arctic and Antarctic for the African worker.’

At length he paused and wiped the line of froth from his lips.

‘I came about a visa,’ said William diffidently.

‘Oh,’ said the consul-general, turning on the radio once more. ‘There’s fifty pounds deposit and a form to fill in.’

William declared that he had not been imprisoned, that he was not suffering from any contagious or outrageous disease, that he was not seeking employment in Ishmaelia or the overthrow of its political institutions; paid his deposit and was rewarded with a rubber stamp on the first page of his new passport.

‘I hope you have a pleasant trip,’ said the consul-general. ‘I’m told it’s a very interesting country.’

‘But aren’t you an Ishmaelite?’

‘Me? Certainly not. I’m a graduate of the Baptist College of Antigua. But the cause of the Ishmaelite worker is the cause of the Negro workers of the world.’

‘Yes,’ said William. ‘Yes. I suppose it is. Thank you very much.’

‘Who discovered America?’ demanded the consul-general to his retreating back, in tones that rang high above the sound of the wireless concert. ‘Who won the Great War?’

****

The rival legation had more spacious quarters in an hotel in South Kensington. A gold swastika on a white ground hung proudly from the window. The door of the suite was opened by a Negro clad in a white silk shirt, buckskin breeches and hunting boots who clicked his spurs and gave William a Roman salute.

‘I’ve come for a visa.’

The pseudo-consul led him to the office. ‘I shall have to delay you for a few minutes. You see the Legation is only just open and we have not yet got our full equipment. We are expecting the rubber stamp any minute now. In the meantime let me explain the Ishmaelite situation to you. There are many misconceptions. For instance, the Jews of Geneva, subsidized by Russian gold, have spread the story that we are a black race. Such is the ignorance, credulity and prejudice of the tainted European states that the absurd story has been repeated in the Press. I must ask you to deny it. As you will see for yourself we are pure Aryans. In fact we were the first white colonizers of Central Africa. What Stanley and Livingstone did in the last century, our Ishmaelite ancestors did in the stone age. In the course of the years the tropical sun has given to some of us a healthy, in some cases almost a swarthy tan. But all responsible anthropologists…’

William fingered his passport and became anxious about luncheon. It was already past one.

[Brett Bellmore]

Poetry: My favorite, near book length poem is James Thompson's "The City of Dreadful Night"

"Lo, thus, as prostrate, "In the dust I write
My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears."
Yet why evoke the spectres of black night
To blot the sunshine of exultant years?
Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden?
Why break the seals of mute despair unbidden,
And wail life's discords into careless ears?"

If you can get the right edition, the woodcut illustrations by Durer are fantastic, too.

[Frank Drackman]

well if we're gonna go Iambic Pentameter, I've gotta go with
"The Deserted Village" by Oliver Goldsmith, and if you took English Lit at Auburn, you learned that Poem, you lived that Poem, you played it backwards, don't ask me why one of Auburn's team names is "The Plainsmen" unless you want a 45 minute C-Span "Booknotes" lecture

"Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm..."

OK, it goes on forever, mostly forgettable, till you get to the money shot,
"...Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men, more murderous still than they;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies..."

Goldsmith was a regular Nostra-stradivarius, Savage men? Tornados? all he left out were the Gun Stores,

Frank

[Drewski]

Chuck Yeager's autobiography (Yeager) is an easy and inspiring read. Future Shock is worth returning to in the AI era. Despite Adams's meltdown, The Dilbert Principle is still on point and fun. Dave Barry's books are also sill entertaining - Dave Barry in Cyberspace is a blast from the past.

[Sarcastr0]

In Dubious Battle

Catch-22

All Quiet on the Western Front

[SRG2]

One of my favourite name-drops: while I was still living in London, my friend and fellow Lib-Dem party member Sue phones me up and asks, "would you like to have dinner with Joseph Heller?" It turns out that Sue's husband Gerry grew up with Heller and was his oldest friend. "Sure!" I said.

We meet up at a restaurant in South Kensington - Sue, Gerry, Heller and his wife. Heller is cool towards me at first - "who is this guy?" - but then I ask him a question about a joke in "Good as Gold", and then Gerry says, that reminds me of a joke, and from there it becomes just three Jewish men telling Jewish jokes all evening.

[Sarcastr0]

Nice. And good to pull one of his deeper cuts. Heller seems to have been a pretty great guy all told.

Catch-22 is my favorite book period, and has been for decades. I read "Something Happened" and "God Knows" and neither did it for me. I did not have the heart to read the Catch-22 sequel.

Heller had had one classic in him, and no question that was enough for greatness.

I heard some interviews with him on Catch-22. It makes one think of creativity as daemon, taking him over - he talks like a fan more than the author, 'do you remember the part when' 'oh yeah that was a good bit!'

[Dan Schiavetta]

Having not risen high in my profession, I see myself as ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, sitting in my mailroom cubicle. If only I could call up Trump, say “T.S. Eliot!”, and then hang up without identifying myself.

[Sarcastr0]

This is why this book about war has something for everyone.

[Ridgeway]

I didn't like Catch 22 as much as you, but the Pvt Snowden episode always resonated with me. That is where Yossarian is congratulating himself on patching up Snowden's wound, not realizing that the shrapnel (which had made a small, neat wound in front) had ripped ripped a huge hole out his back, from which Snowden quickly and meekly died.

As a metaphor, it works in a lot of real-life situations.

[SRG2]

I thought that part of the film was very well done

[Dan Schiavetta]

Scary, seeing his intestines pour out!

[Drewski]

A journalist once asked Heller why he never wrote another book as good as Catch-22. Heller replied, "Who has?"

[Drewski]

Closing Time is different than Heller's other stuff. It's a better read than Good as Gold or Something Happened (I haven't read God Knows). It's very dark, very surreal, and somewhat manic, but lacks the wryness that made Catch-22 so entertaining.

[Stephen Lathrop]

It makes one think of creativity as daemon, taking him over

The category killer for that is Moby Dick, more or less completely finished, then rewritten from scratch after something got into Melville. Melville was a good writer and a good poet, but during that rewriting frenzy he became great. Only a few traces of the original tale can be identified in Moby Dick, notable because they create disruptions or discordance with what came after.

I agree that Catch 22 is a great book, by the way. But perhaps a slight demerit is that on rereading the surprising witty bits no longer hit as hard as they did with initial surprise.

[Drewski]

"But perhaps a slight demerit is that on rereading the surprising witty bits no longer hit as hard as they did with initial surprise."

So you, what, want Heller to revise your personal copy on each reading? The fact that books aren't ever-shifting kaleidoscopes is not a reason to criticize one in particular. I don't think Moby Dick changed around between readings either.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Drewski, It seems to me that a characteristic of the greatest art is that it grows with repeated attention, instead of diminishing. It's an admittedly high standard, and not much gets over that bar.

[Drewski]

It sounds like you just have different standards for humor. It isn't there just for the sake of the jokes any more than the plot points of Moby Dick are just to tell a story.

You don't re-read great works to be surprised, you do so to look past the superficial layers and try to suss out the work's deeper meanings. The ever-changing Catch-22 itself is funny in its iterations, but what's interesting is the fact that it changes and becomes increasingly blunt, which characters cite it, when, and to whom, and what those characters and situations represent. To be disappointed that the jokes don't land any more is to watch Citizen Kane and expect to be blown away by the Big Reveal.

From what I've seen of you here, I can't help but suspect you're trying to pry the jokes apart with hermeneutic analysis. There are a very few authors whose works reward this approach but I don't think you'll get very far doing that with Heller.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Drewski — No, it does not sound like that. Moby Dick is full of humor, and at least for me, it does not diminish with subsequent readings. Other folks cannot stand Moby Dick. I met a professor of American Literature who confessed he had tried to read Moby Dick, and could not get halfway through it. People are different.

Also, whatever hermeneutic analysis is, I never try to pry anything with it.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I just reread “Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont” (1971) by Elizabeth Taylor (the novelist, not the actress). And saw the wonderful 2006 film of it (on YouTube) with the great Joan Plowright. Highly recommend. Serene, sad, oddly optimistic about aging, youth and points of contact. As another writer put it, “only connect”.

[Brett Bellmore]

Robert Zimmerman: "Conscious Choice: The Origins of Slavery in America and Why it Matters Today and for Our Future in Outer Space"

It's a deep historical analysis of why some of the original 13 colonies became slave states, while others free states. Written mostly with an eye to colony design for space colonization, but has implications for modern society, too.

[Sarcastr0]

I've got a bevvy of nonfic but I'm taking literature as meaning fiction.

[Brett Bellmore]

Maybe. I was thinking of it in the 'written matter' sense.

[Sarcastr0]

Neither way causes much harm; you do you.

If there's no nonfic or poetry threads upcoming in future weeks, the History of Supreme Court threads do just fine for that.

[Sarcastr0]

Hater thread -

I can't stand Faulkner for some reason. There are others as much into style over substance who I find to be a vibe.
But he just rubs me the wrong way.

Hemmingway's style is tops. Don't care for his content. IMO hold out for his journalism.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I am with you on Hemingway. I like the way he writes -- I don't like what he writes about.

As for Faulkner, I've read "As I Lay Dying" and "The Sound and the Fury". He is good at narrative, and use of language, but I can't get interested in people who seem too dumb to live. The father in "Dying" is probably the stupidest, most selfish character I've seen in fiction.

[Sarcastr0]

Double hate validation.

You may have made my day!

[Ridgeway]

My Mom summed up Hemingway in Hemingwayesque fashion: "His novels are sentimental. His short stories are much better."

She also found DH Lawrence overly sentimental.

She did not like "sentimental".

[John F. Carr]

"I can’t get interested in people who seem too dumb to live."

I finished Martin Amis' London Fields despite the awful characters because of the hints early on that they might all die.

[Brett Bellmore]

You might like Lord Dunsany's "Unhappy Far-off Things". It's NOT his usual fantasy, it's reflections on WWI and the aftermath in the form of prose and poetry.

[grb]

Sarcastr0 : "I can’t stand Faulkner for some reason"

I love Absalom, Absalom to death, particularly in my audiobook version. Those impossibly long sentences flow like poetry in a shape-shifting tale of mad pride and tragic fate.

Hemmingway I've never developed a taste for (though his style is something to aspire to imitate).

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

My favorite "Absolom":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD3VdF1B-Qg&t=106s

[Stephen Lathrop]

One of the best things ever written by anyone is Faulkner's few sentences about Gettysburg, in Intruder in the Dust. It's so short, and so good, that I will put it here:

It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago; or to anyone who ever sailed a skiff under a quilt sail, the moment in 1492 when somebody thought This is it: the absolute edge of no return, to turn back now and make home or sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world’s roaring rim.”

I think Faulkner is hard. Too bad you don't like him. What's not to like about a writer who confesses himself a racist, then makes the sin of it a subject for ruminations so goading and ubiquitous they invoke the pain of enduring them? The pain is supposed to rub you the wrong way.

[Ridgeway]

IIRC, Intruder in the Dust was intended to be "popular" as Faulkner needed money. Cf. The Big Sleep screenplay, and Frasier's Dad in Barton Fink.

His "literary" work suffers from being self-consciously literary.

[darkknight9]

The Man In the Bowler Hat
The Secret Life of Bees

[Mark Leen]

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.

[Ridgeway]

I like Heart of the Matter even better, although, as some wag put it, his doctrine of salvation through sin is a little out there.

[Jerry B.]

The Oceans and the Stars, by David Helprin.

[Jerry B.]

Sorry. Mark Helprin.

My mind is full of schemes to avoid all knowledge of the vice presidential debate tonight.

[Ridgeway]

I think Helprin's best work (and there are several to choose from) is Soldier of the Great War.

[Alan Gunn]

James Gould Cozzens, “The Just and the Unjust” and “Guard of Honor.”

Joseph Roth, “Radetzky March” (“The Radetzky March” in Hoffmann’s English translation, which I haven’t read, but Hoffmann’s translations are generally regarded as excellent.)

Kingsley Amis, “Lucky Jim.” And for another novel about academic life, David Lodge’s “Changing Places.”

If you can tolerate the clunky prose, Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy.”

All these except “Changing Places” are set in the first half of the twentieth century, but that’s when they were written, so I don’t think they’re “historical,” though I may be wrong about Roth’s. I’d include “War and Peace,” but that goes without saying. Though I did.

If essays count, just about anything by H.L. Mencken, Joan Didion, and Joseph Epstein (who dislikes Didion's stuff, which seems odd to me because they seem to me to be somewhat similar).

My high-school classmates voted me "class bookworm," an honor which I fully deserved.

[John F. Carr]

I felt lucky to have a couple books by living authors in my high school English class. One of them was Lucky Jim. I went to high school before 1995. Now even his son has died.

[Ridgeway]

Radetzky March is great (not sure which translation I read), as are Lucky Jim and American Tragedy.

Dreiser's prose never bothered me -- his stories move along so well I don't notice any stylistic flaws. Sister Carrie, as well as the lesser known ones like Jennie Gerhardt hold up pretty well too.

[grb]

One of my favorite books is one of the longest : Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann. It’s actually four novels bound together and every one is slightly different. The first is one of the best and is focused on Jacob, centered around the novel’s theme myth continually reoccurs, with people recognizing their own mythical role even as it happens. That in turn allows the Mann theme of fiction that comments on itself while underway. By the third section, you’re deep in ancient Egypt and following the hopeless passion of Potiphar’s wife for the beguiling Joesph.

It has that very gentle & human irony Mann is known for with this as a background factor : It was written from 1926 to 1943. Mann’s gentle “comedy of mankind” from Genesis was created as his beloved Germany was consumed with madness, anti-Semitism, hate & war.

[Ridgeway]

I always recommend Buddenbrooks to people . I have yet to find anyone who didn't like it.

[grb]

That’s the one major Mann work I haven’t read, though it waits patiently sitting on my shelf. I’ve read & reread Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus. The Holy Sinner is a lighter work, but a real hoot.

Doctor Faustus is coming out on audiobook on 21November, narrated by David Rintoul. (Rintoul was the Darcy in the best Pride & Prejudice put on film, the 1980 Masterpiece Theatre version. Elizabeth Garvie was a kickass Liza Bennett)

[SRG2]

My grandmother recalled attending a lecture by Thomas Mann where he read some extracts from his draft of “Magic Mountain”!

I also enjoyed "Felix Krull".

[Ridgeway]

Do yourself a favor and read Buddenbrooks. There is a relatively new translation that I prefer to the old H.T. Lowe-Porter one.

I did my college honors thesis on Doctor Faustus, so I read it and Magic Mountain auf Deutsch as well as auf Englisch. They are both great but very different from Buddenbrooks, although you see a little of Mann's fascination with philosophy in parts of Buddenbrooks.

[Ed Grinberg]

I am rereading Charles Dickens's David Copperfield. A great novel.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Yes -- though interestingly David himself is a very vaguely defined character.

[Ed Grinberg]

Not surprising, since, according to Wikipedia, "David Copperfield is...a partially autobiographical novel."

[Sarcastr0]

Any Russian lit fans?

I minored in it in college, but in the end all that I kept a copy of was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and some Chekov.

So much for Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky! Not on the haters thread though - they are great. But I like tight as well as good, and they sure could get longwinded.

[SRG2]

"Dead Souls" by Gogol, as well as his short stories - though some of them are fantasy. ("Taras Bulbe" is interesting but marred by occasional anti-Semitism, IMO. But then, that afflicted English literature as well - Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, etc.)

"Life and Fate" by Vassily Grossman - about WWII so perhaps historical?

"Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov - possibly to be classified as fantasy, though.

I don't think "Communist Manifesto" counts as Russian literature, but it is certainly a short piece of fiction. 🙂

[Ridgeway]

The Grossman books are excellent. They are historical the way War & Peace was historical, so I'd say they fit fine in the general lit category.

I couldn't get into Dead Souls -- I have read that Gogol's Russian really does not translate into English.

[Alan Gunn]

I forgot to mention "The Master and Margarita" in my comment above, but I agree. A lot of it is fantasy, but I think it's largely poking fun at the soviet literary people, and its takes on Christianity are fascinating, too, especially in a book published (in part at first) in an officially atheist totalitarian country. I dislike most fantasy pretty strongly, but in this case I loved it.

[Brett Bellmore]

Nothing I'd bring up this week, now that the intent of the thread has been clarified.

[Internet sloth]

Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was a great listen. That one time on the hunt with Levin when the point of view slipped into the mind of the dog was so funny.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I may have to read Anna Karenina. I didn't know it was a thigh-slapper.

[Ed Grinberg]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musk-ox_(Nikolai_Leskov)

[Stephen Lathrop]

Sarcastr0 — Two great authors drove me away from their works by the names they gave their characters. One wasTolstoy, who couldn't help it, there were a lot of characters, they had to be Russian, and I couldn't keep up. The other was Dickens, who did it on purpose. For some reason I hated being instructed about the personality of a character by building it so obviously into the name. Far better I thought to let a name open a question. I count, "Call me Ishmael," the best opening sentence of any novel I have read.

[Whitey51]

"Cancer Ward" by Solzhenitsyn. A very fine novel on many levels.

[grb]

The Desert Island Question has always been a stand-in for favorite books and music. But I remember something from the novelization of 2001 (read decades ago) : Bowman - of course - ends up alone on the spaceship at the end. Clarke describes his music taste shifting in response to solitude. Some things he enjoyed before become less rewarding as others emerge.

The same thing works with books. I may love a perfect little gem like Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, but it probably isn't a Desert Island Book in this deeper sense. Whereas something big & messy like Ulysses is a whole universe in itself. It would be.

(In my youth, I methodically worked thru Ulysses but Finnegans Wake was always hopeless. As a novel, I prefer Portrait to them both because it's tighter. But would it be as good a Desert Island Book?)

[SRG2]

On those grounds, my Desert Island Books list would include the Babylonian Talmud (in translation), "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", "Lord of the Rings", the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, collected works of Jorge Luis Borges (the poems to be in Spanish with side-by-side English translation). and a few more as they spring to mind.

[grb]

Decline and Fall has very crisp writing. Plus everyone keeps making the same mistakes over & over, which is probably the most important lesson to learn from history.

[SRG2]

One passage struck me in particular – in the city of Herat, there was a large and lovely Zoroastrian temple next to a small and miserable mosque. A fire consumed both (IIRC implied that this was urged by a Muslim preacher) whereupon 5,000 devout Muslims swore under oath to the city rulers that there had never been a Zoroastrian temple there and that the entire large lot had been the site of a mosque. The rulers duly found for the Muslims whereupon a large mosque was constructed and the Zoroastrians were SOL.

[grb]

Given something similar just happened in Modi's India, that just supports the same thing over & over theory. Of course the Muslims were on the losing side this time

[Drewski]

Yeah, if I have to pick a novel it's going to be something like Tristram Shandy that I can spent a lot of time with. My first pick would be a thick, blank diary if you give me a box of pencils or something.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Here is one for Sarcastr0—maybe the best combination of tight and great out there: Heart of Darkness by Conrad.

How well I remember when that one showed up on my high school summer reading list. Good, I thought, a short easy one. Ha!

[Dan Schiavetta]

Good book. Odd how someone can be so good a writer in a later-learned language.

[SRG2]

Oddly I preferred Conrad as an adolescent. As an adult I found his style often overblown. Sometimes knowing more hinders the experience. I loved Herman Hesse - particularly the Glass Bead Game - in my teens, but as an adult I found his inability to write female characters well to be irritating.

[Ridgeway]

Heart of Darkness is a good one. Death in Venice (Thomas Mann) is similarly dense and great. I'd argue that Great Gatsby is as well, but lots of people are down on GG these days.

[Ridgeway]

Night Soldiers by Alan Furst is phenomenal. His other books are really good as well, but cant quite measure up.

The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger is really good, especially the clarity he had in 1933 for what we know as obvious only in hindsight.

ETA: pretty much anything by P.G. Wodehouse is a guaranteed mood-improver.

[grb]

Ridgeway : “Night Soldiers by Alan Furst is phenomenal. His other books are really good as well, but cant quite measure up.”

Agreed Night Soldiers is the best, but the ones that followed were great too, such as Dark Star & The Polish Officer. The last really top-notch one was Dark Voyage.

One thing about Furst is his earlier books have a wide narrative sweep and real human suffering – something you’d expect given the times portrayed. A lot of the later efforts have a very restricted plot scope and much more “comfortable” characters.

My theory? As authors get more comfortable they often pass on the luxuries to their characters as well, particularly in series work. A prime example is O’Brian and Aubrey–Maturin. The two main guys start off regularly destitute but are soon each given fortunes. Patrick O’Brian even killed-off Maturin’s unsuitable wife offstage to bring in the perfect substitute by Bk20.

[MoreCurious]

Pretty much anything by Wallace Stegner.

[Ruqt]

John Fowles, The Collector perceptive examination of a certain type of deviant thinking, should be studied to learn about mass shooter minds. The Magus, study in self deception, evil of a different kind, ahead of its time inclusion of graphic pornographic theme. Daniel Martin, combines English novel descriptive language with modern romance, character study, nihilistic age theme.

[Ruqt]

The Magus was published in 1965 (and a revised alternative ending added later) prior to Antonioni's Blowup won the Palmes d'Or at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, both viewed as groundbreaking both featuring eroticism intended to draw the reader/viewer into/inside the plot. Originally titled the Godgame, with Maurice Conchis a wealthy Greek island recluse manipulating visitors: for what purpose?

[Ridgeway]

The Magus by John Fowles is one of the most original books (but still accessible and enjoyable) I ever read.

[Paladin_44]

Anything by Carl Hiaasen - his latest "Squeeze Me" is topical is several ways.
A bit on the heavy side is "The Passenger" by Cormac McCarthy. I havent tackled his "Stella Maris" yet...

[SRG2]

I've not read recent Hiaasen - for no good reason - but I always like him. In a similar vein, the Serge Storms novels by Tim Dorsey, in principle repetitive though they are, are great fun.

[hobie]

You read Tim Dorsey's Florida novels? Great comedy

[Rev. O.T. Medal]

Hiaasen fits more neatly into the Detctive/Crime category. But let's not quibble. I second the "Anything by Carl Hiaasen" recommendation. “Squeeze Me” is fine, albeit not one of my favorites. I think "Sick Puppy," "Strip Tease," and "Skinny Dip" are all fuunier. But any of Hiaasen's ruminiations on the madcap weirdness of life in Florida is worth a read.

[Rev. O.T. Medal]

For today’s “Literature” category, I have to give a shout out to the classics. Here is a short list of some of the finest American authors. I provide a recommendation or two for each of them.

John Steinbeck – His tale of the migration from the Oklahoma dust bowl to California during the great depression, “The Grapes of Wrath,” is fantastic. I also like his first volume of collected, interrelated short stories about misfits and ne’er-do-wells in Monterey, “Cannery Row.”

Herman Melville – “Moby Dick” is about so much more than Ahab’s hunt for the white whale and includes some wonderful prose. “Moby Dick” has to be on the leaderboard anytime there is a debate over the best ever American novel.

Mark Twain – “Huckleberry Finn,” ‘nuf said. Also, Twain wrote great short stories. The much anthologized “Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is still a quick, fun read.

Jack London – “Call of the Wild” has a bigger reputation. But for a tale of men, dogs, wolves, hardship, and adventure in Alaska during the gold rush, I prefer “White Fang.”

Ernest Hemingway – I saw above that some folks don’t like Hemingway. Their loss. The man could flat out write. For an introduction to Hemingway, start with a collection of short stories, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories.”

Moving on from the classics to more modern American novels. Here are three quick recommendations.

“A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John irving. Here is the first line, “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice–not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God.”

“The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles. This is a great roadtrip novel. The year is 1954 and the route is from Nebraska to New York City.

“Bel Canto” by Ann Patchett. The beauty of this book is in Patchett’s prose and in the way she explores and develops relationships between disparate characters trapped together. The plot is based on the Japanese embassy hostage crisis, which dragged out over several months in 1996–1997 in Lima, Peru.

[SRG2]

Moby-Dick, deffo. I really liked it. For some reason I'd read a few books on whaling before then - "Of whales and men" and "Cruise of the Cachalot", etc. and so even the apparent subject matter appealed.

My old friend Tom Shippey (Tolkien and SF expert) used to tell the joke that the top undergrad student at Harvard each year would have revealed to thehm the great secret of American literature. They would be led through underground passages, etc. etc. to a small room, swept for bugs, and the head of the English faculty would then whisper in their ear, "Moby-Dick isn't that great".

[Zarniwoop]

Second the rec for "A Prayer for Owen Meany". I also enjoyed "The Cider House Rules" quite a bit.

[Eeyore 2]

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Or if you want something really obscure, The Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris.

[hobie]

My two favorite novels:

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry such a pleasure to read over and over again

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy beautiful, epic and dark. Keep your dictionary handy

[Ridgeway]

I was stunned by how good Lonesome Dove was. Blue Duck is the best “bad guy” I have ever come across.

I thought Blood Meridien suffered from some of the same flaws as much of Faulkner — McCarthy was too consciously trying to write the Great American Novel ™. Dennis Lehane suffers from the same problem today.

All the Pretty Horses (the first of the Border series) was by far my favorite Cormac McCarthy book.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Agree on All the Pretty Horses. A great novel.

[hobie]

Yes, McCarthy can get so Faulknerian that a couple of his books are almost unreadable (Suttree). All the Pretty Horses was nice, but No Country For Old Men is my favorite readable novel of his

[Ridgeway]

I liked NCfOM, bur it read like a screenplay.

[Grover84]

Emilia Pardo Bazán, The House of Ulloa

Jose Maria Eça de Quieroz, "The Illustrious House of Ramires" and "The City and the Mountains"

Benito Pérez Galdós, "Tristana"

Leopoldo ALas, "His Only Son"

Italo Svevo, "Zeno's Conscience" and "A Perfect Hoax"

Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Brothers Karamazov" etc.

Mikhail Lermontov, "A Hero of Our Time"

Ivan Turgenev, "Fathers and Children"

Vladimir Nabokov, take your pick

Magda Szabo, "Iza's Ballad"

Bohumil Hrabal, "Closely Watched Trains"

Alain-Fournier, "The Lost Domain: Le Grand Meaulnes"

Muriel Spark, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," "The Abbess of Crewe," and most of her other novels.

Gwendolyn Brooks, "Maud Martha"

[GreenLanternCorps]

“Advise and Consent” by Allen Drury

Gripping political novel about a dying President’s controversial nominee for Secretary of State.

Winner of the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

[Lurker9999]

For this, I'll drop out of "Lurker Mode" and make my first Volokh post. Some standards in this list, but some oddballs too.

Remo Forlani, Au Bonheur Des Chiens (never translated into English as far as I can tell).
P.A.F. Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons, a true study in virtue , vice, and passion.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, "The" study in manners and mores.
Mark Twain (Clemens), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Jack London, White Fang.
M. James, Ghost Stories, yes they are short stories but perhaps the greatest ghost stories ever written.
Robert Graves, I, Claudius.
George Orwell, Animal Farm or 1984, take your pick.
P.G. Woodehoust, some fine examples in his works, but they haven't aged as well over the last 30 years.
Emile Zola, Thérèse Raquin.

[SRG2]

Nobody did ghost stories better than MR James.

I much liked the two Claudius books but I thought Count Belisarius was even better.

[Alan Gunn]

Interesting that, unless I overlooked something, nobody has recommended "Ulysses." It often appears as number one on academic people's lists of "best novels." I've read it (except for the "Oxen of the Sun" chapter) and while it has its moments I'm not going to read it again. Sure, Joyce was brilliant and knew just about everything about European culture, but reading a novel with hundreds of footnotes explaining what Joyce is doing isn't my idea of how to pass the time enjoyably. Apparently, I'm not the only one.