Would anyone like to join me in a modern classics challenge for 2015?

[mmack]

This year I read some very good books but a lot of mediocre ones as well. So next year I plan to read 12 modern classics that I haven't read before. Would anyone be interested in doing something similar? Or in discussing any of the books with me? My list is below. It's a bit male-dominated but that's because I tend to read mostly female writers so the classics I haven't read are mostly by male writers.

1. Saul Bellow; Herzog 2. Martin Amis; Money 3. Truman Capote; In Cold Blood 4. John Updike; Rabbit, Run 5. Philip Roth; American Pastoral. 6. Kent Haruf; Plainsong 7. Kurt Vonnegut; Slaughterhouse 5 8. Iris Murdoch; The Sea, The Sea 9. Doris Lessing; The Golden Notebook 10. Margaret Atwood; The Handmaid's Tale 11. Ron Moody; The Ice-Storm 12. J.M. Coetzee; Disgrace.

Hi everyone I'd like to join!
Will order In Cold Blood, Stoner and The Handsmaid's Tale.

1. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

Essentially this book comprises a collection of imagined cities as described by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. On a deeper level, it speaks of the relationships between memory, fantasy and reality. The descriptions are rich in detail and the cities are beautifully evoked; the dialogues between the explorer and Emperor are intriguing. But there is no story here; it's a book of ideas. I found the endless descriptions tedious and rushed through many of them; perhaps then this is a book to dip in and out of rather than to be read linearly.

Sorry, not third but first book (modern classics).

I've had to turn off the Elizabeth Jane Howard thing on 4Extra. Couldn't manage the dramatisation of "Mr Wrong." Might as well be left alone with an episode of Luther ...

Ho hum - hope I'll cope better with Mr Capote's cold blooded murder. Wonder if I should leave it for daylight hours?

Well, the first few chapters are quite charming, really - it's all very much scene setting albeit with some ominous overtones.

1. Nemesis, Philip Roth

I'm not sure that a novel published in 2010 can strictly be counted as a modern classic, but considering the novelist is Philip Roth and the novel has been critically acclaimed, I'm going to add it to my list of twelve.

While his peers fight in Europe and the Pacific during a sizzling summer in 1944, playground director and phys ed teacher Bucky Cantor wages his own war in his local Newark N.J. neighbourhood protecting the children from their fears of succumbing to polio. Along the way he struggles with his own fears about dying and about a God who could allow death to innocents happen.

A wonderful novel with its interesting plot, evocative descriptions and finely tuned characterisations. I scampered through to the end.

I think that in 2100 when people are making lists of the best books of this century Nemesis will make the cut. It qualifies as a modern classic for sure.

I clicked a link in another thread and found a timeline that suggests I may live to see my 200th birthday. So I'll be able to pass judgement on what has by then become a classic.

Also means I'm feeling a little more relaxed (or slightly less panic stricken) about the 1,200 odd unread books in my combined basket and wishlist ...

Living to see 200 won't help though. Your wishlist will just keep growing. What we need is a way to pause time for everything except us until we have read everything on our current wishlists. If I didn't have to do anything except read and sleep and I could just live on bagels and sandwiches I reckon I could read mine in about 3 months.

1. Indignation, Philip Roth

In 1951 straight 'A' student and atheistic Jew Marcus Messner leaves his over-anxious family far behind in Newark N.J. to enrol in a conservative, pastoral college in Ohio. There he has to learn how to negotiate a series of frustrating, bewildering and at times elating relationships as well as deal with his fears over being enlisted as a frontline soldier in the Korean War.

I found this novel to be gripping, moving and in places laugh-out-loud hilarious. I absolutely loved this and want to read more Roth! His descriptions of both the emotional and physical landscapes of his characters, combined with the elegant flow of his prose are amazing.

Going to read Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed next.

I just finished Stoner. It was brilliant. I know it's a book I won't ever forget reading. The very simple writing style reminded me of Nemesis. The book I read before that was We are Water by Wally Lamb. I loved his other books but I never totally got into this one. I think it just had too many characters, incidents, plot twists and co-incidences for me to get totally absorbed. It was the exact opposite of Stoner.
I know there was a Stoner thread here a while ago so I'll read it before I post any more here.

Gosh it's fun seeing what comes up when I type "Stoner" into Search.

I'm slightly amazed to see the outpouring of love for this on MN. Is it bad that that makes me think worse of the book?

I've got Stoner on my book pile. I'm looking forward to reading it.

I looked at Stoner on Amazon so now I'm being advised to buy Harold and Kumar get the Munchies.
I think that Stoner is exactly the book that would be loved by MN. It's about marriage and parenthood as much as anything else so would strike a chord with us. John Williams must have been in his early 40s when he wrote it. It would be interesting to see what a 20 year old would make of it.
My daughter is 13 and she read Purple Hibiscus recently and she loved it. It is her favourite adult fiction book so far. It made me wonder if it resonated with her so much because she is so close in age to the main character.

I'm a third of the way throughout Stoner and finding it quite depressing as some of the story is hitting a little too close to home. But it's very well-written so I'm going to keep going.

An interesting article on contemporary female novelists for anyone who is still making a reading list.
time.com/63548/goldfinch-female-authors-reading/

My third modern classic was Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Has anyone else read it or any other Murakami?

I bought it with my Christmas book token mainly because the cover is so pretty. It was an easy read but I think I might just be too old and cynical for it. All three of the main female characters seemed unconvincing to me. Once Reiko (the older lady in the sanatorium) came into the story it went rapidly downhill. She was just creepy. I also thought that the setting could have been any university at any time in the past 50 years. There was nothing very '60s about it at all.
So should I give Murakami another chance or is Norwegian Wood fairly typical of his writing?

Stoner was the most depressing book I've read for a while. All the characters were two-dimensional apart from Stoner (is it because that's how he sees them?) and I felt oddly unattached from the main character. And I'd have liked more depth but difficult to achieve this when the book is about one man's life from childhood to old age and is less than 300 pages. Most of the prose, however, is well-written, if florid now and then. Not a book I'll ever re-read.

Added Nice Work and A Single Man to my list.

I thought the things we didn't know about Edith were very interesting. The way she behaved when her father died made me wonder if she had been abused as a child. Stoner let her down so much when they were first married-it made her sympathetic even though she is an awful character in most ways.
I don't think male writers in general are very good at writing female characters. I'm struggling to think of any book written by a man with a great female character. The early Douglas Kennedy books maybe and Jonathan Franzen in Freedom.

A contemporary male writer who gets the closest to being able to write good female characters, I think, is Colm Toibin.

Whilst I didn't love Nora Webster, his most recent novel, it does an excellent job of portraying the raw pain of grief and the struggle to survive in the aftermath of the death of her husband. It isn't always a pleasant read, and she isn't a sympathetic person.

mmack I wasn't bothered about Norwegian Wood either but I've gone on to love some of his other novels. For a surreal story you should try a real Murakami modern classic The Wind-up Bird Chronicle; for a less surreal and more accessible book try last year's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I adore Murakami, but not all of his work.

I agree with Duchess ref. Colm Toibin. His female characters are written really well: full of complexity, contradictions... I loved last year's Nora Webster but consider his Brooklyn or The Blackwater Lightship as modern classics that will be read for decades to come.

I've only read The Blackwater Lightship and Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. I loved the Blackwater Lightship. It was a very powerful story. I was a bit disappointed in Brooklyn though because I thought it was very hackneyed in comparison. I must give him another chance and read Nora Webster.

Talking of Colm Toibin made me think of other Irish writers and I realise that I did William Trevor a great injustice. He is one of my favourites and Felicia's Journey, The Story of Lucy Gault and Love and Summer all have brilliantly written central female characters. The female characters in Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann are also very memorable.

BsshBosh, have you read Kafka on the Shore or Sputnik Sweetheart? I was reading the summaries of other Murakami books on amazon and they both look promising. I'm not sure that I like surrealist literature but the point of this challenge is to try something new.

Maybe try Toibin's The Testament of Mary. It is short, but very powerfully written.

mmack have read neither and both are on my to read list this year.

1. The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin

A brilliant physicist leaves his arid, anarchist planet of Anarres for the lush, capitalistic sister-planet of Urras, hoping for more acceptance of his ideas. But he soon discovers he's being used as a pawn in a deadly political game.

Impeccably written and full of thought-provoking ideas on science and society.

Now reading The Bell Jar.