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?

I loved a lot of the short list and read about half of them. Jarrahs menagerie, Pigeon English, snow drops, loved them! Also another vote for his dark menagerie. Imdidn't read them for years. It took a rare friend who's taste I trust to go with them and then couldnT put them down

Btw Apologies for the typing - bloody iPad!

"His Dark Menagerie"

Now that I bought them all, I hope that wasn't a Freudian slip!

Try House of Leaves. It's huge, bizarre, and unforgettable. No use for reading on the bus as it's too big, and it'd lose something in ebook format.

Can' blame the iPad for that one!

I'm confused ... Cloud Atlas and This Thing of Darkness are two of my favourite books ever ... I even went to the cemetery in Norwood where Fitzroy is buried on a sort of pilgrimage as I found it so hard to leave the characters however I loathed girl with a shite tattoo (would rather gouge out my eyeballs with a rusty teaspoon than read books 2 and 3) but loved A Fine Balance so we obviously don't have the same taste after all ...

However I would second His Dark Materials, not a children's book at all IMO, and throw in The Quincunx by Charles Palliser, one of the first of the Victorian pastiche novels and absolutely engrossing - I came to it in the wake of a Wilkie Collins/Dickens immersion. And have you read any Ursula K LeGuin? I read the Earthsea books as a child and have re-read them every few years since, but as an adult I'd thoroughly recommend The Left Hand of Darkness.

I've recently read and enjoyed Wolf Hall (although it took me about 3 goes to get into it and I'm still not convinced by the irritating use of the present tense), Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell though I suspect you'd find it fey, loved Wind-up Bird Chronicle and would thoroughly recommend The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, seemingly much more of a conventional novel than Cloud Atlas but fascinating and haunting.

By the way, had you seen that Cloud Atlas is being made into a film? I'm simultaneously looking forward to it and dreading it ...

I took a while to get into 1000 autumns but liked it the end. Gave up on jonathon strange (something I rarely do).

Loved thecquincunx - notbthevtype of book I usually read.

basildon - I could do a 'pilgrimage' to Fitzroy's grave in about 30 mins walk from my house .

Have been meaning to do that & go to Down House to pay homage to Darwin too...but my BIG plan was to follow in their footsteps to Tierra del Fuego...wanted to see penguins so badly! Big snowstorm which grounded all flights at Heathrow, Dec 2010, put paid to all that.

So I haven't re-read This Thing of Darkness since then, as still bitter about my lost holiday dream, but it IS a great book.

People who liked that might also like William Golding's seafaring trilogy which starts with Rites of Passage.

Any Human Heart by William Boyd is very good & David Mitchell fans would probably enjoy it, has the same sense of a broad scope of history & a cast of thousands.

Dragon Tattoo was a page turner for me, harmless fun but nothing more. Book 1 much better than 2 & 3, but I had to read all 3 to find out what happens...

bulletproof I nearly gave up on Jonathan Strange, was really bogged down by it and so bored! However the ending was surprising & had me in tears, hadn't expected that at all.

Mind you I dispatched my copy to the charity shop the other week, don't think it is a re-reader.

Gave up on The Quincunx and Jonathon Strange AND the bloomin' Dragon Tattoo shite (God that was so bad).

Talking of Golding, has anybody read, 'Pincher Martin?' Now that is one v v weird book.

"I was a bookish 13 year old but His Dark Materials wasn't around then. Changing my life was left to 1984 and Brave New World"

Ditto!

Slaughterhouse V is almost poetry itself much like Clockwork Orange in many ways. There are definite beats and rhythms to both. I really do envy you reading Slaughterhouse for the first time.

Cote, please do discover margaret atwood. Start with the Handmaid's Tale. You'll never want to read anything by David Mitchell again (incidentally, don't bother reading anything by David Mitchell again. It's all downhill from Cloud Atlas, and if you read anything by Margaret Atwood, you'll wonder why you ever even went to the trouble of buying Cloud Atlas.

I don't know anything about, 'Slaughterhouse Five.' Do I want to read it?

I didn't enjoy His Dark Materials although I accept that I am the only person alive who just didn't see what all the fuss was about. The first was bearable but by the time I got to the wheeled horse thingys, my face was stuck in a permanent - would happily have ditched them if I hadn't had to read them for work.

I recently saw a play that kept mentioning Henry miller so decided to read tropic of cancer. Oh my god. I can't believe how wierd it was. Either I am a pleb or people who rate this book are seriously wierd. I read it to the end as I thought there must be a plot, I was wrong. Anyway now trying to read Tom Jones also pants. The great Gatsby was great

Pincher Martin looks interesting, thanks for the recommendation.

If you are a fan of "weird" books, may I suggest J G Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition? Absolutely fantastic book and one of the weirdest I have ever read (and that is against some competition).

Talking about weird, does anyone here know that Nick Cave has written a very strange but weirdly great book? It is not for the faint of heart!

Ooh yes to Nick Cave - it's insane!

Has anyone mentioned The Crimson Petal and The White? Read it way before the TV adaption came out and it got all popular. Love it. Also, Michael Faber's short stories are really worth reading. And his novel Under the Skin - that's a bit 'fantasy' but also a great tale.

This thread has got me wanting to read all my old books again, despite having a mammoth pile of new ones to read.

I read Tropic of Cancer twenty years ago but didn't think it was that weird. Just a lot of casual sex.

Remus - Are you me? I have never met anyone who has even heard of that book, let alone read and liked it.

Joyce, Ulysses
Perec, La vie: mode d'emploi

Just been reading through the thread and adding a pile of books to my kindle wish list!

I have recently read (and enjoyed) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and Angelmaker and The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway.

All good reads IMO, kept me entertained on a recent long plane journey!

Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (if you've not already read it, which probably you have!).

Whoever said the classics was dead right: Dickens, Bleak House or Our Mutual Friend for his amazing control of plot; Thackery, Vanity Fair.

Manzoni, The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi if you've got Italian): explains a lot about even modern Italy, and psychologically very rich.