Let's play a game this morning

[decemberthirty]

A book recommending game!

I spent most of 2012 in a reading rut. You know the sort of thing I mean--reading all sorts of books, always hoping that I would fall in love with the next one, but never quite getting there. This year, I'd like to feel passionate about my reading again. And I'd like it if you, dear LJ-friends, would help me break out of my rut.

Here's how it'll work: I'll give a general description of my taste and the sort of things I like (longtime readers probably already know more than enough about my taste in books!), and you tell me about an author you think I might like or describe the last book that knocked you head over heels. BUT! This is not a one-way street! If you'd like to receive recommendations too, post a comment that tells us about you as a reader, and if I've got any good recommendations for you I'll share them. Others can chime in too, and soon (I hope!) we'll all be sharing our favorites with each other and adding lots of titles to our to-read lists. If this sounds like fun to you, feel free to pass it around--the more the merrier!


Favorite authors: E.M. Forster, Marilynne Robinson, Virginia Woolf, Colm Tóibín, Pat Barker, Ursula K. Le Guin, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Munro, Michael Chabon, Sherwood Anderson, etc...
Preferred genres: Fiction. Fiction of all sorts: short stories, novels, novellas. I mostly read fiction of the 'literary' variety, but I am happy break out of those bounds for well-written sci-fi, mysteries, or thrillers. Very occasionally I read memoir and essay collections.
Things I like: historical settings, queer characters, queer characters in historical settings, beautiful prose, believable love stories even (especially?) when the endings aren't happy ones, dark elements, real human emotion, coming-of-age stories, tight plots but also sometimes introspective plotless rambles, books that make me work, stories about families, characters I can love.
Last book that really blew me away: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. You can read my post about here, if that would be useful.


Okay, go!

Comments

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Oooh, so many books off the top of my head. You may well have read many of these already!

The Sparrow (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/334176.The_Sparrow) - Mary Doria Russell
The Blind Assassin (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78433.The_Blind_Assassin) - Margaret Atwood
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37380.The_Heart_is_a_Lonely_Hunter) - Carson McCullers
The Song of Achilles (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11250317-the-song-of-achilles) - Madeleine Miller
The New York Trilogy (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/431.The_New_York_Trilogy) - Paul Auster
I Capture The Castle (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31122.I_Capture_the_Castle) - Dodie Smith
Human Traces (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7482.Human_Traces) - Sebastian Faulks
The Crystal Cave (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/82192.The_Crystal_Cave) - Mary Stewart
Perdido Street Station (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68494.Perdido_Street_Station) - China Mieville
Loitering With Intent (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58680.Loitering_with_Intent) - Peter O'Toole

It would take aaages to write why I like all these/why I think they'd match your tastes but I'm happy to discuss any that might strike your fancy!

[mi-er.livejournal.com]

Oh totally seconding The Blind Assasin. What a fantastic book. Other from the top of my head that stayed with me for a while: pretty much everything by Alice Hoffman, The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson (currently re-reading). When God was a rabbit. Julia Glass's The Three Junes and the sequel. But there's more for sure!

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Excellent! I've been meaning to read more Atwood, so I will definitely try The Blind Assassin. And I haven't read any of the others you mention, so I'll check them out!

[mi-er.livejournal.com]

I really want to re-read the 3 junes next. And like someone else recommended: middlesex. And the poisonwood bible! If you haven't read it already.

[mi-er.livejournal.com]

What I like about the Gargoyle which is also what I liked about 'the tiger's wife' is the creation of stories within a story.

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

I think the delicate way she has of expressing the ...prosaic nature of suffering, if I can call it that, works so well in that novel. You'll probably see the ending coming a mile off, but I don't think that hurts the novel at all.

[pax_athena]

Oh, "The Blind Assassin" is already waiting next to my bed - definitely one of the next books I want to read.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Ooh, great! I adored The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and I also really liked The Sparrow although it's been years since I read it and I don't remember it that clearly... And I've been meaning to read more Atwood, so I'll make The Blind Assassin a high priority. Thanks!

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

Seconding China Mieville. LOVE his work.

[great-dame.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh! This is a weird one, but it falls in there with the emotion, the love, the fiction. VURT by Jeff Noon is a "cyberpunk" novel that is full of fantasy but not the dragon stuff...DEFINITELY dark elements and unlike anything you'll ever read again. It's practically a secret language as you read it. Lots of substance abuse as the plot revolves around feathers that are programmed with a collective Matrix that people tickle their throats with and escape to.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

You know, I remember a friend telling me about VURT years ago, but I had forgotten all about it until you mentioned it. Thanks for the reminder!

[silas-says.livejournal.com]

My recommendations for you:
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (if you haven't already read it)
anything by Ali Smith
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins (full disclosure, this is one of my friends--but I mean it: INCREDIBLE.)
Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock (also The Devil All the Time, but only if you're REALLY okay with dark)

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Nothing wrong with recommending work by friends!

I've read Middlesex (and I liked it, although I didn't end up totally falling in love with it), and I will definitely check out the others on your list. Thanks!

[pax_athena]

Christa Wolf. German, East-German, to be exact, one of the leading names in German literature (was unfortunately, she died last year), but not very well known outside, for reason which I don't fully understand.

Her books are - hard to read, beautiful, haunting, true. I hardly ever get the feeling of someone writing their very soul out. I do so with Wolf. It's like somebody letting light into all the dark corners we are always afraid to look into. At the same time, there is great mastery to how she builds the books: the scaffolding of the story, which is sometimes not held together by a plot, but by something else: associations, feelings, characters and their relationships.

I don't think there is a book of fiction of hers which did not wholeheartedly get five stars from me, even if those are books which I would not have picked up if they were not by her. My favourites are perhaps Medea and Kassandra - both re-imaging of the reality behind the Greek myths, the last one accompanied by five essays on the writing process. Her other books are like this, not about what they superficially seem to be, but about everything. But on the surface they are about evenings, spent with friends in a tiny village - about the day that Chernobyl happened, even though spent in middle Europe - about ... Oh really, just about everything.

Some other books which come to my mind:

Christoph Hein: The Distant Lover
Jorge Luis Borges: Short Fiction (Ficciones and/or Alpha)
Sandor Marai: Embers

If you want to break into SF, John Tiptree Jr.'s (Alice Sheldon's ) "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever". Or Marge Piercy, both "He, She and It" and "Women on the Edge of Time" (her non sf work is great, too, but I haven't read much there - yet.).

*******************

And about me as a reader:

Things I like, it random order: short (but I also love Umberto Eco, so I like long, if it's good enough), crisp, clear, extreme mastery of language, character-driven stories, contemporary, post modern, classics, literary, the personal and the political interconnected, strong women, books which ring true, stories which ring real, good science fiction preferably aware of the New Wave heritage, science fiction which is actually literary fiction just with the wrong label, painstakingly constructed stories (Borges, I look at you), meta-levels, Greek but not only Greek mythology, actually the antique Greek comedies and tragedies (Aristophanes is frighteningly modern - all the things sold as new, were already there), books which left a trace in literature (Paradise Lost).

I mostly read fiction and will very rarely venture into non-fiction. I don't like historical setting for their own sake, except when it's about the last 100 years or so, it has to be about the story that is told (as, say, in Eco's Name of the Rose) not about the time.

So, recs for me?

P.S. Sorry for typos, I have to run to teach ...

[mabith.livejournal.com]

Authors:
Naguib Mahfouz (brilliant writing and plot construction)

Antigonick - Anne Carson (an interesting re-telling/interpretation of Antigone)
Blackout and All Clear - Connie Willis (science fiction+historical fiction, won three of the biggest SF awards)
Small Island - Andrea Levy (lots of strong women, rings generally true, great characters)
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell (gorgeous writing and understanding of personal relations)
Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (one of my favorite classics, for the writing and characters)
The Secret River – Kate Grenville

[pax_athena]

Oh, thank you! You mentioned Mahfouz in your other rec, too :D I'm definitely going to pick up his "Children of the Alley", which seems fascinating both in its subject and reception history.

Antigonick sounds amazing! A very experimental approach - I guess this will be one of those books one does not read at once, but enjoys over the course of several days or weeks. Nice, definitely on my list with it.
(Antigone itself is such a great play!)

Connie Willis has been a bit of a meh experience for me. I read her "Doomsday Book" in 2011 and for me, it was rather a disappointment. I'll give her another try, just perhaps not very soon. I'm still too sad disliking Doomsday Book so much, because award-winning science fiction by women is usually the very thing I love and be very passionate of recommending others (see LeGuin, Piercy, McHugh, Russ).

I'll keep the rest in mind, though they may be a bit too onto the historical fiction side by me. I sometimes enjoy this kind of books, but I usually need to know the author before and to know that I like them to pick a book up.

[mabith.livejournal.com]

I managed to totally space on the username of who I was replying to, so I didn't realize it was you!

Reading Children of the Alley was incredibly interesting for me. I found it incredibly hard to believe that anyone of ANY religion could find it offensive though.

For what it's worth, Most of Connie Willis' books didn't sound that interesting to me. What I think she gets most right in Blackout and All Clear is the true difficulty in understanding personal reactions to large historical events, plus I think her pacing and the balance of what she makes obvious vs what she keeps hidden (particularly in the second book) are just really perfect.

With the others (with the non-classics that is), my first reaction to them wasn't that they were historical fiction. They definitely fit that label, but the people and the relationships are definitely the main focus and the history is just the backdrop. That's why I picked out those particular ones, at least.

[pax_athena]

Oh, don't worry! It made me go and check his books a second time (and read the Wikipedia article on his work) and now they moved up my reading list :D

I usually really like it when fiction re-imagines religions and builds on it. There are so many symbols ingrained in our daily life which can be traced back to religion, so many traditions (even if one happens to be an atheist like me) - there is so much to say, so many things resonating which each other when it is done right. But it seems to mostly end with someone upset.

I plan to give Connie Willis a second try. All authors get at least two , if they got the first at all ^^"

I'll keep the books in mind, but they don't yet give me the "read now!"-feeling that Mahfouz and Anne Carson do :) I think it may be that from the book descriptions it sounds like there is a certain meta/intertextuality level - I'm not sure how exactly to put it in words, it's mainly a feeling - to both Children of the Alley and Antigonick and this is something that I enjoy a lot and heavily miss if it's not there. Now I may be absolutely wrong, but it's what makes me really excited about the first two books. And I'm aware that this is something that I did not mention in my description of myself as a reader - I just forgot, although it is an important point, that's why I end up liking "postmodern" as description for a lot of book I read and enjoy.

[mabith.livejournal.com]

I sometimes think that religious books are of more interest to me because I'm an atheist. It's nice to know about for when you get a lot of flack over not being religious, and even nicer to know more about religious tradition/books than the book criticizing you!

Definitely understand on book tastes. I'm not that much of a fiction person myself. I have things I really like and I'll never stop reading fiction, but I'm a pretty straight reader.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

That's a very strong recommendation for Christa Wolf--you make her sound fantastic, and like somebody I would very much like to read. Thank you!

Have you read Annie Proulx? She came to mind for me when you mentioned mastery of language and character driven stories. I like her short stories better than her novels, so I would recommend a collection like Close Range or Bad Dirt. Sometimes her stories can be a bit brutal, but at other times she lightens them with a dark sense of humor that I really like.

My best recommendation for science fiction that's really literary fiction is Ursula K. Le Guin, but I'd bet you've already read her. But if you haven't, The Left Hand of Darkness is wonderful. And she's another writer whose short stories I love--The Compass Rose and The Birthday of the World are great collections.

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Ursula le Guin is just the best thing ever. Staggeringly beautiful, humane writing.

[pax_athena]

You are welcome!

I haven't read Proulx yet, but after looking it up, Close Range definitely goes onto my to-read list. It's not really reflected in my reading from the last years, but I actually often prefer short stories or novellas over novels. Something changes when the writing has to be shorter, to the point. Not that I dislike novels, but there is a kind of clarity which I more often encounter in shorter works and which never fails to enhance me.

You would win this bet :) LeGuin is actually one of my favourite authors. Also one of the authors I got to know as a kid, though the books I read then were mostly not her children/ya-books, but never stopped loving, because there is so much to them. Levels and levels of meaning.

[mi-er.livejournal.com]

Yes Embers! I totally fell in love with the way he uses language. It's so beautifully written.

[pax_athena]

Yes! It was one of the books which I did not expect much from and then it was pure magic, the kind of book I can't lay away even though there is not much actually happening. Still need to pick up more by Marai!

[silas-says.livejournal.com]

I already recommended this one above, but it fits for you, too: Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins.

[pax_athena]

Oh, thank you, it does indeed sound very interesting! Onto my reading list with it :)

I do intend to read it in English - but I found it rather fascinating that there is a German translation of the book. In a hard cover edition. For a first book of an author and a short story collection this is very impressive!

[xphilega.livejournal.com]

haruki murakami is a love-it, hate-it type of author, but I LOVE him.

Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Dance Dance Dance are my favorites. :)

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Interesting... I've only read Murakami's story collection After the Quake, and that was a bit love-it-or-hate-it for me even within the same collection. I've been meaning to read his novels, though--thanks!

[mabith.livejournal.com]

Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Adichie
Palace Walk - Naguib Mahfouz
The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
The Cry of the Go-Away Bird - Andrea Eames
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell (similar to Jane Austen, but while I just can't get into Austen I adore Gaskell, who's also much funnier though this isn't one of her humorous ones.)
Antigonick - Anne Carson
Black Swan Green – David Mitchell (definitely my favorite recent coming of age story)
The Secret River - Kate Grenville
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Schaffer
Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger (maybe. It's quite dark and rather odd, sort of coming of age plus a bit of supernatural business, but in a not-too-annoying way.)
My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece - Annabel Pitcher (this had some issues, but all in all was an excellent book, I think it's technically aimed at young adults but could easily go in the adult section, I feel.)

These are mostly sort of random, but I think all fit at least one of the likes you mentioned. I also just have a great love for both Naguib Mahfouz and Pearl S. Buck. Sometimes I see The Good Earth being assigned as summer reading to high schoolers and then they hate it because they're teenagers with little world knowledge or experience and or patience with history. So I try to get people who read it too young to read it again.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I can't get into Jane Austen either, although I sort of feel like I "should" like her... So perhaps Elizabeth Gaskell is just the thing. Lots of titles I haven't read on this list, so I will check them out!

I have to confess, though, that I read Palace Walk a couple years ago, and I kind of hated it. I know so many people who love it, and I really thought I would love it too, so I suspect the problem may have been with me rather than the book... I tell people that I didn't find myself caring about any of the characters and they look at me like I'm crazy. Maybe I am!

[mabith.livejournal.com]

Ha, well, with Palace Walk I can see how plenty of people wouldn't like it. I'd read a lot of Mahfouz before that one though, so in large part I was just into his writing style. I can't really say that I cared that much about the characters in Palace Walk either, but I love the writing and I loved learning more about regular, daily life in a place and time that I was unfamiliar with (plus with that one it fed my constant WWI interest).

Honestly I think it takes a lot for me to really care about a fictional character. I care deeply about the real people I read about in non-fiction and can get quite fannish, but with fiction it's not really a strong point for me. Now, fiction with no even remotely likeable main characters (grumble grumble Blithedale Romance grumble grumble) is something I hate reading, but I really don't need to care about the characters to enjoy a book.

[dianora77.livejournal.com]

Aww, you like Forster, he's one of my faves too!

From the writers I've recently discovered I really liked Knut Hamsun (Hunger and Growth of the Soil), Muriel Barbery's L'élégance du hérisson, John Gardner's Grendel, Daniel Keye's Flowers for Algernon, and Elizabeth Knox's The Vintner's Luck.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I've read Grendel and Flowers for Algernon (both of them ages ago!), but I'll definitely check out the others.

[salvagejob.livejournal.com]

So here's a weird one for you, offered in total seriousness: "The Long Secret" and "Sport" by Louise Fitzhugh. Yes, Louise Fitzhugh, who I'm willing to bet you, the avid reader, read growing up. She wrote "Harriet the Spy!" I recently read all three of these books and they blew me away, especially "The Long Secret." Outside of Beatrix Potter, who is a completely different sort, I cannot think of a better children's writer, period. And Fitzhugh is just a brilliant writer, period. I would read anything of hers and don't really consider it children's lit, although it is that as well, of course. Does it fit your specs? Well, in a way. Fitzhugh was gay and though this doesn't feature obviously in any of the stories, you do get a different feel for some of the characters knowing it. I actually ordered a book about her and am excited to read it because there's so little about her on the web and she strikes me as such a strong, interesting character.

Seriously. The Long Secret.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

I have to confess: I was as much as reader when I was a kid as I am now, yet somehow I skipped over Harriet the Spy. Everyone I know who grew up as a bookish kid loved it, and to this day I've never read it. So this is a great recommendation, and I will check out Louise Fitzhugh.

[salvagejob.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. You are in for a treat. To be honest, I think Harriet the Spy is better read as an adult. That is, it's a good book for children, but there is much you can appreciate only as an adult. I'll be interested to hear what you think.

[lusimeles.livejournal.com]

wide sargasso sea by jean rhys or really anything by jean rhys comes to mind. maybe george saunders' new one, tenth of december since you seem to enjoy short story writers? as for queer characters, i recently read alan hollinghurst's the line of beauty and thought it was quite alright, although it's famous enough of a book that i feel like you've probably read it already - he feels like a good forster inheritor, though. also, to almost everything on your 'things i like' list: call me by your name by andre aciman. pretentious but AMAZING and definitely one of my fiction faves. pascale quiviger's the perfect circle is another that comes to mind, although it's also uber pretentious - the style of prose makes me think of something you might like, though (it has a really slow and beautiful cadence).

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

This is a bit of a belated reply, but thanks for the recs! I love George Saunders to bits and definitely want to read his latest. I've read a few of Hollinghurst's, but not The Line of Beauty, which is kind of weird because that's his big Booker-winner, so you're right that I should check that out. And I've never read anything at all by Jean Rhys or Pascale Quiviger... Thanks!

[lusimeles.livejournal.com]

i couldn't get into the line of beauty until about half-way in, because you don't see the stakes until then, but it's quite a powerful book once you reach the end, i think.

jean rhys' prose is gorgeous - sparse and yet brimming with sensuousness. as for pascale quiviger, she's not particularly well-known at all - she's a french-canadian writer, i think - and her prose is almost poetry.

[diabological.livejournal.com]

Hello. I found your new lj friends post and it prompted me to check out your journal. First, an introduction. I'm Kate. I read and write, but most of my journal is a psycho-spiritual battle ground, rather than a lace to calmly talk about reading or writing. But I've been on LJ for 11 years, so it's served different functions and could change again. Now, onto important matters. If you don't mind the plotless non-linear as long as it poignant and draped in stunningly beautiful prose, consider reading Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels - The book is as potent as poetry. And if you haven't picked it up already (since above you were talking about reading German literature), Death in Venice by Thomas Mann is as powerful as it is short.

Let me know if you're interested in "friending." Be well.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Hi! Thanks for dropping by, and for the Anne Michaels recommendation--I just read a little about the book, and it sounds like something I would really like. I've read "Death in Venice," and you're right: it's both powerful and beautiful.

I'd be happy to be Lj-friends. I'll head over and add you now. If you're interested, you can learn a bit more about me in my intro post (http://decemberthirty.livejournal.com/193369.html).

[diabological.livejournal.com]

Ohh I just know you are gonna love Anne Michaels. :). I'm at work now and will come back to your writing, which I am keen to check out. Meanwhile, here is a nice concise intro from me as well.Yay! (http://diabological.livejournal.com/329285.html)

:)