I’m glad to have stumbled upon this list–I just added 10 more titles to the running list I keep at the back of my pocket calendar in my purse!
Additional recommendations: 1) The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (especially for those who also loved The Thirteenth Tale)–works in secrets from the heroine’s family past with the story of Vlad the Impaler (Dracula); 2) Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series–most written in the 1930’s–very literary detective fiction (she was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford and was a scholar and translator as well).
Just finished Egger’s What is the What (excellent);currently reading Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel; next up Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book.
I’m currently reading Pulitzer Prize winner The Known World by Edward P. Jones and am enjoying it tremendously. I know that someone on CC recommended it, though I can’t remember who it was, but I’d like to extend a general thank you. It truly is a remarkable novel that explores the world of freed slaves, set in Virginia, who then go on to own slaves themselves. It is not an easy read, but it is a satisfying read, with beautiful prose and excellent character development. I highly recommend it.
I read most of The Known World but gave up about two thirds of the way through. I agree tha it is not an easy read.
I am currently mesmerized by Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series…I’m on the last one (Breath of Snow and Ashes) and will be so sad when I finish. It was written a couple of years ago so I’m hoping another is on it’s way soon.
always – are you in my Book Club??? I’m also currently reading The Known World (for BC.) I had read it on my own several years ago, but since I’m the discussion leader at our next meeting, I decided to re-read it. Loved it the first time and am enjoying it again.
Just finished “The Splendor of a Thousand Suns” which I happened to see on display at the library (it was hard to get when it first came out.) Loved it! Beautifully written, heartwrenching, and a timely reminder of what Afghanistan is all about. Still.
Just read “Flower Children” by Maxine Swann – beautifully written about growing up with flowers children as parents. It’s more a collection of stories than a novel. The first one, in particular, is very evocative and moving. I’m sure it will stir memories for some of you.
Literary critics (and professors) Daniel Mendelsohn (Bard) and James Wood (Harvard) discuss the future of literature in an increasingly electronic world (available in both audio and video):
recently read Ken Follett’s “The Pillars of the Earth”. couldn’t put the book down, and that says a lot for somebody like me who will usually start to read something and then leave it on the shelf unfinished most of the time.
In the wake of David Foster Wallace’s death, I got around to reading a book I’d been meaning to read for a long time: Kay Redfield Jamison’s book on suicide, Night Falls Fast. As many no doubt already know, Jamison has a distinct perspective on matters such as this. She is co-author of the leading medical school text on bipolar disorder (though she prefers the older term “manic-depressive illness”). She has this disorder herself and has written a critically acclaimed memoir. And, while in her late 20s, she tried to kill herself. This book, perhaps surprisingly for a topic that might seem awfully monochromatic, is very richly textured: it moves back and forth between, on the one hand, “big picture” discussions of statistics, history, etc., and, on the other, intimate profiles of particular individuals.
Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer. I picked up the first book which had been lying around the house for a while and couldn’t put it down. I finished it at 9:00PM on a Sat night and had to go right out and buy the next book. I have reread and/or listened to the audio version of all 4 books at least twice. My 15yo son is now hooked, although he would never tell his friends.
Although my highly dyslexic son is now a reader, we share a bond of reading to each other (mostly me reading to him). My wife read The Hobbit to him in kindergarten and I read the entire Lord of the Ring Series to him during first grade and engendered a lifelong love of stories, books, and fantasy. He’s currently co-authoring a fantasy novel.
I’m reading (to him) Micromotives and Macrobehavior and The Strategy of Conflict by Tom Schelling, a Nobel Prize winner in economics and one of the smartest people I’ve ever come across. These books of essays are wonderfully written and intellectually very subtle. Micromotives is entirely written in English (Strategy of Conflict has a few tables but is also in English and not math) and while the writing seems clear, most people are not accustomed to thinking as hard as one has to while reading to truly understand what Schelling is saying (especially in The Strategy of Conflict). They have been highly influential. Schelling is responsible for developing the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, which likely prevented nuclear war during the Cold War and Micromotives lays out the basic argument of tipping (elaborated and expanded upon very nicely by Malcolm Gladwell). It is a pleasure to reread these.
I’m also planning to reread with him A Bend in the River, by V.S. Naipaul, which I think is some of the best modern writing in the English language. I’m partial to Enduring Love by Ian MacEwan, the first part of which contains some breathtaking writing.
Yesterday, in the morning, I started Hurry Down Sunshine, a father’s memoir of the summer his 15-year-old daughter was “struck mad.” By the end of the day I’d finished itit’s that good.
The daughter the father had known so intimately is suddenly swept away by manic psychosis. Inhabiting her body is a virtual stranger. The book has a headlong quality, like mania itself, and the portraitsof the daughter; the psych ward’s other patients, staff, and visitors; the narrator, his ex-wife (the girl’s mother), his new wife, the girl’s doctors, *et al.*are invariably sharp and vivid and nuanced. NYC, too, where the family lives and the girl is hospitalized, comes alive on the pages.
I’m currently reading The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed, the geneaology and story of Thomas Jefferson’s slave family, (his deceased wife and his enslaved mistress Sally Hemings were half sisters, fathered by the same Virginia planter.)
Also, The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby. It’s a pretty depressing yet readable book about the dumbing down of America and it’s truths are reflected in our current presidential campaign.
Yesterday I read “The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness” by Elyn Saks (about her lifelong battle with schizophrenia–she’s now a USC law professor). Fascinating, humane and very readable. I finished it in a few hours.
