Coming off a literary high - please help

[CoteDAzur]

I just read Cloud Atlas and This Thing Of Darkness in quick succession, both epic, fantastic books of great scope and vision.

Now I don't now what to do with myself. Read another book, but what? What can I read now that won't be a huge disappointment after these two wonderful books that I have just finished?

Cat's Eye & the Robber Bride are my favourite Atwood novels.

Love Middlesex but found The Virgin Suicides quite slight in comparison: much less meaty & satisfying.

Favourite Iain Banks are the Crow Road & the Bridge. Not read any of his sci fi.

Also: Donna Tartt if you haven't read her already!

Of Hilary Mantel's books I loved Wolf Hall & A Place of Greater Safety but not Beyond Black, found it v dull & uninteresting.

Sounds like you might like The Sisters Brothers which I have just finished. Very good read. If you want a laugh I really liked Our Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire (who wrote Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Mirror Mirror, Lost and the Wicked trilogy). And actually the latter are really good if you havent read his stuff before.

@cote Murakami - I haven't read 1Q84 yet, but I would second the recommendation for Wild Sheep Chase. Plus his short stories are always great, and often you'll find themes in them that he expands in later novels.

I think you don't need to know the absolute political detail of modern Turkey to appreciate Pamuk - altho in my case it meant I went out and read up - I think a lot of themes raised are pretty universal.

I've been pondering my other favourite authors. Have you read Bruno Shultz? Totally beautiful - I couldn't bear to finish it so skipped the last two pages!

Yes, agree that the Dune series, and Asmiov's Foundation series both fufill, imho, the 'epic and fantastic' brief.
Def yes, yes to Slaughterhouse Five also.

(Also, maybe not up your street, but I loved loved the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Since about eleven, if I had to take one book to a desert island - assuming trilogies are accepted - I would choose this one.)

wWater for Elephants. NOT the film. The film is a pale imitation of the book.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

Since reading this book 5 years ago, I've given it as a present to numerous people with all different tastes and interests when it comes to literature.

Without fail, everybody has agreed that it is one of the most haunting and high-impact books that they've ever come across.

Now that I know how extraordinary it is, and how it's stayed with me since I first read it, even reading the blurb gives me chills:

'Charlie Gordon- IQ 68, is a floor sweeper, and the gentle butt of everyone's jokes, until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius. But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental transformation preceded his, fades and dies, Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary'.

Oh God. PLEASE read it! :o

Anything by HP lovecraft is worth a go, The ring is also amazing, so much better than the film, and batman the broken bat trilogy is great :)

Dorothy Dunnett is the best author ever in my humble opinion. Her books sparkle and the plots are breathtaking.

Start with Game of Kings for the Lymond chronicles or Niccolo Rising for the house of Niccolo series.

The Lymond series and the Niccolos are tied but you don't find out how until the last page of the last book.

Dorothy Dunnett is the best author ever? Have you read anything else?

Without meaning to be rude, we have been talking about intellectually challenging books here rather than those that sparkle.

On a similar tangent, I have read Water For Elephants (for book club) and while it was a light read, moderately entertaining, thankfully not very long and also very far from books like Cloud Atlas and This Thing Of Darkness. Not a bad book but definitely not what we are looking for here.

Sorry that came out too harsh. DS fighting me for control of iPad.

I'm almost finished 'the company of liars' by Karen Mailtland. I'm crap at describing books but it's plaguey, set in 1348 about a group who end up travelling along trying to escape the pestilence and they all have secrets that propel the story along. It's quite dark and mysterious and I've really enjoyed it. I didn't expect much from it but I like to ring the changes with genres. Maybe worth a look, I'm def going to read more by her now. Also, I love love Murakami but he is fairly marmitey.

@cote Dune? Intellectually challenging? Really? I thought you were talking aout Good Reads. Because that's what most of the books mentioned here are. Sorry, I thought this thread was completely different than you thought it was. Easy mistake though given the two books (both of which I love but neither of which could be described as intellectually challenging) which kicked it off.

And Stephen King - although a fantastic writer - is hardly in the intellectually challenging camp either!

Oh yes HP Lovecraft (all free through iPhone apps or Guttenberg for Kindle/PC) is gloriously nihilistic.

Stephen King is deeply under rated as a writer critically (although not by sales). I know of very few others who can make characters come to life so quickly in a story and make you empathise with them within very few words (Harper Lee is similar. In fact Mockingbird felt like a King book that had been censored of the horror until you get near the end and realise the horror was there all along just more human in form than most of King's work).

What about Heart of Darkness. I must confess I've given it 3 goes and not got past the first few pages but I know it must be good if I ever do get into it as so many other works are influenced by it.

Dune isn't exactly throw away fiction. It isn't an impenetrably deep treatise on the human soul like some books that disappear up their own bums but it isn't pulp fiction at all.

I've yet to start on them myself but I've heard a huge amount of good stuff about the Books of Ice and Fire.

Oh and have you read the Lord of the Rings and Narnia books? Obvious ones to ask but some pass them over as too mainstream.

CoteDAzur Have you read any Ken Mcleod? Intrusion is his latest one. Fairly near future dystopia, pregnant women closely monitored re cigarettes and alcohol and also expected to take a pill called 'the fix' which removes any genetic imperfections.

I loved Cloud Atlas, Wolf Hall, the Song of Ice and Fire books by George R R Martin.

You could also try William Gibson's more recent books - Pattern Recognition, Spook Country and Zero History?

Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell?

Sorry if I've repeated what others have said - haven't read the full thread.

Metabilis - Yes, Dune is a "Good Read", and an intellectual one. That is why it has remained at the very top of sci-fi lists since it was published in 1965 while the books of Asimov, Heinlein, and Arthur C Clarke have faded in relevance. And I doubt if I have misunderstood the purpose of this thread, since I am the one who started it. Why the hostility?

I read Stephen Donaldson's 1st Gap book (The Real Story) and have to say was very disappointed. It was basically one long masochistic teen boy fantasy of sex & sexual dominance about a woman enslaved and mentally/physically controlled as a sex toy. I didn't read the other books.

I haven't read any Ken Macleod. Just checked out his books on Amazon and they look interesting, thanks for the recommendation.

William Gibson is an odd one. I have read all his book starting with Neuromancer in early 1980s (he invented the word "cyberspace" in this book), continuing with Idoru, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome (short stories one of which - Johnny Mnemonic - was filmed with Keanu Reeves). Loved them all.

Then came his All Tomorrow's Parties which was mediocre but not bad. Spook Country that followed was disjointed, rather meaningless, with weak plot and characters that drift in and out of rooms and cities without much to do or even say. Very disappointing. William Gibson's Twitter feed is very interesting, though. He posts under GreatDismal.

Ivanhoe - WAlter Scott

I read a varied amount (although probably too much sci fi - second Iain M Banks and REynolds btw and Peter Hamilton), but haven't really touched the 'classics' since I was at Uni.

Thought I'd better start somewhere, so a bit of Romantic (in the proper sense) fiction about mediaeval knights and expelled Jews it was.

I'm really enjoying it! THrow in some spaceships and it's very similar to a lot of sci fi!

Oh, and not sure if anyone's mentioned it, but recent dystoption fiction by SArah Hall, called either DAughters of the North or the Carhullan ARmy, depending on the edition.

Shades of Handmaid's tale, but enjoyable in its own right.

Reading these suggestions with interest.

For anyone that likes Murakami, I'd also recommend Banana Yoshimoto as an author. Same ilk of Japanese, eccentric characters.

Also, Donna Tartt (not Japanese, I know!). And thirding (fourthing, fifthing?) Middlesex (I, too, was underwhelmed by The Virgin Suicides. Anyone read his latest?). As an aside, I originally read that in German, and when I picked it up from the library shelf, I thought who on earth would write a book about Middlesex? Glad curiosity got the better of me though, as it's one of the best books I've read.

Oh, and I highly, highly recommend anything by Rohinton Mistry. In particular a Fine Balance.

And the mighty Iris Murdoch. My favourite is The Black Prince.

Was introduced to those latter two authors by picking up a book of theirs each from the charity bookshop I volunteered in. Haven't looked back.

I agree that Stephen King is a great author with a very powerful style. I didn't realize there was any doubt about this, actually. It is a shame that he has chosen to write thrillers only. I have read all his books in my teens, including the short stories, but was disappointed with some of the newer ones like Cell. Notable exception was Duma Key, which was a fine return to form that stayed with me for a long time, like his older novels had done twenty years ago.

I tried reading Lord of the Rings but all that absolute good vs absolute evil, good characters being so pretty/handsome while evil ones are so ugly felt very juvenile. I'm not a fan of fantasy, quests, knights and princesses against evil characters etc so didn't persist.

While we are on this subject, I'm much more interested in conflicted/ambiguous characters who are neither good nor bad, possibly on a slow descent into madness, with interests and obsessions way out of mainstream tastes. J G Ballard's books are brilliant in this sense - The Atrocity Exhibition is singular in this respect, and I'm told Crash is also incredibly well-written and bold (loved the film).

Whoever said they wouldn't read any more David Mitchell after Cloud Atlas, I should say that, while I wasn't too keen on that one of his, there are a couple more of his that I did really like.

The first: Black Swan Green
The second: Number9Dream

Would anyone recommend Ghostwritten, his debut?

Whenever anyone is asking for a recommendation I always, always suggest Half of a Yellow Sun.

It is wonderful. It's the book that got me back into reading after a post-university aversion and, five years later, I still think about the characters and their fates. I read that it's going to be made into a film soon - mixed feelings about that!

I'm another one who enjoyed Middlesex, but did wonder when I first picked it
up how on earth such a dull county could provide the subject matter for a book!

I haven't read Eugenides' latest but it is MN's April "book of the month". This might be a good time to read it, since we will get a chat with the author at the end of the month.