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Adult fiction
: OK - I want new things to read. Please can you list two books- one classic, one modern- you think everyone shoulf read.
(195 messages)
Birds of America (short stories by Lorrie Moore). American Pastoral great too, but Lorrie Moore is way more entertaining and I feel redeemed by Sebastian Faulks recently including it in his "20 immortal books I own" or some such list...There is a collected short stories out too. I am going to start reading it again as soon as I've finished it - and I never do that.
Talking of Robert Graves. Anyone read (and become temporarily obsessed with) The White Goddess? Fascinating book.Read it at college many years ago. But it seems noew that much of it was actually written by his girlfriend
Oh, mine are already done, just want to second The Time Traveller's Wife; beautiful, moving book.
If you like friendship tales, The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood is wonderful. Mine is dog eared after being read by friends and their mums too!
Glad others rate Middlemarch - not sure what adjective is georgimama - delectable, maybe? A treat. A box of chocolates without the calories or orange cremes. One of those books you don't want to end, despite its impressive length.
Have to add a sneaky extra vote for Decline and Fall while I'm at it.
There are a lot of contenders for my modern one already mentioned, so I'll go for The Corrections by J Franzen which I read recently. It is about a hideously disfunctional family and is a love or hate it book. It certainly kept me going!
Classic...more difficult. Just bought The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge which I read as a child and loved. Will I still love it? We'll see! I really enjoyed a lot of French stuff (dates from my A level) Dangerous Liaisons - Choderlos de Laclos. Where do you stop??
Gah mumofmanyboys you just pipped my classic suggestion - I was popping on here being all smug, thinking 'no one will have suggested Les Liaisons Dangereuse yet'. Absolutely brilliant book, repays a second and third reading too.
Modern: The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty. It falls apart a bit towards the end but is a fantastically sustained black comedy up until then. His second novel, Tuff, is also excellent in a completely different way - dreamy and sad and , well, tough.
Troube is, all this has just made me want to re-read things - I've read most of the listed books but not for a long time. I'm going on holiday tomorrow and I am now going to take Brideshead Revisited as a re-read and I'm going to read Middlemarch again when I come back. Then start on all the others......!
There really are some brilliant books here - I'll be taking note of a few. In cold blood - Truman CApote is coming in for lots of praise from a friend at the mo...a busy time ahead!
By Truman Capote (same guy as 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'). It's a story that follows a true event where a family were killed in Canvas. Capote followed the story avidly, becoming involved with the two men who were eventually charged with the killings. It's horrifying and shocking, but a tale told with great empathy. I was only 17 at the time, but was deeply affected by it. I recommend it to my AS/A2 Literature students now!
Classic: Anna Karenina or Therese Racquin (or anything by Balzac, actually) or Bleak House
Modern: The Corrections (Jonathan Frantzen) or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon, I think) or The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
Now, having looked at everyone else's, how about MadameBovary (yes I know other people have proposed it) plus (here's the shtick) then Posy Simmonds's first marvellous classic re-imagining GemmaBovery
Or, what about doing non-fiction? Let's say Gibbon, Decline & Fall ... followed by, well, I was going to say The Feminine Mystique, but they have notalot in common. Anyone suggest anything that matchingly pairs with D&F?
Classic - On The Beach, always makes me incredibly sad when I read it.
Recent - Through A Glass Darkly by Jostein Gaarder, written simply but with such hidden depths and very comforting in a strange way. It did make me cry but I won't spoil it by saying what or why.
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