I’m not sure I got all of it. Except for Breakfast of Champions (which I don’t remember), I was a teenager when I read them. I mostly just remember enjoying them very much.
You never got Catch 22 and On the Road?
“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”
Forster (any)
Proust (In Search of Lost Time)
Pynchon (selected)
Calvino (selected)
David Mitchell (pending)
Leo Tolstoy
Charles Dickens
Thomas Hardy
Nathanial Hawthorne
Xavier Herbert
[quote=“jimipresley”]
So you never grappled with “Finnegan’s [Finnegans] Wake”? You LIGHTWEIGHT, you![/quote]
funny guy. I started Joyce a few weeks ago and it seemed a good idea to go to his last, final work, and final cry. Ah, what a book, the book! Check out Readings (Hélène Cixous) for some clues of an explanation or all her students of Genetic Studies.
[quote=“Charlie Phillips”]Leo Tolstoy
Charles Dickens
Thomas Hardy
Nathanial Hawthorne
Xavier Herbert[/quote]
Tolstoy. He’s a beauty.
My favorite quote from Tolstoy (War and Peace) which I read in a book on chaos theory:
I know that most men, even those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom admit to the simplest and most obvious truths if it oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, profoundly taught to others, and woven thread by thread, into the very fabric of their lives.
Yes, “The Magus” … What can you say about it … One of the strangest novels I’ve ever read, but totally brilliant. When I was reading it, I was thinking I wish I had read it in my late teens. [/quote]
Based on that I went and read The Magus over the summer, pretty damn good. I thought of your words after I read it, very true, it would’ve been an awesome book to read in my late teens/early twenties. That Lily, what a naughty girl.
I just want to add China Miéville to the list as mentioned somewhere up there. His books set in the Bas-Lag world are incredible.
Does anybody rate Neal Stephenson?
In no particular order:
Kurt Vonnegut
Mordecai Richler
Kazuo Ishiguro
David Mitchell
Tom Robbins
On the bubble: Haruki Murakami, Richard Russo, Carol Shields, Ray Bradbury and Aldous Huxley.
I loathe to put Robbins on this list because it probably speaks volumes about me, but I can’t help myself. I’m a sucker for his prose.
[quote=“Tomas”][quote=“jimipresley”]1. Martin Amis
2. JM Coetzee
3. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Phillip Roth
5. Salman Rushdie[/quote]
I love Philip Roth too, but I could never get into #2, 3 or 5. I haven’t read anything by Martin Amis yet.[/quote]
That’s because JM Coetzee is pathetic as a novelist. He made his mark as a literary critic and wrote some good stuff on analysing and interpreting literature, but that doesn’t mean he can write. Through being a critic he knows what is controversial and thus what will get people talking, so he includes many of those aspects into his work without even bothering to explore them. What we’re left with is lumps of text with no beginning, end nor any clear direction. i.e. nothing worth reading. Though not the worst book I’ve ever read, Coetzee’s novel, Disgrace, is the worst book I’ve ever finished reading.
As for me, my tastes are catered more by fantasy, for very often it is only in a fantasy setting that one can reveal what one truly feels.
Mervyn Peake, a master of eloquence writing if there ever was one.
Terry Pratchett, say what you will about his novels being aimed at a younger audience - there is a charm to his work that never fails to delight.
Bill Bryson, a blend of dedicated research and insight, sprinkled with delightful humour and witticisms.
Xinran, I find her delightfully learned English language descriptions of China to be both haunting, saddening and memorable.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. Enough said.
While the thread is for top five, I have to make a comment about Shakespeare. I know he is probably overdone as a great writer (and indeed there were greater writers than him even in his own time, if only less well known) but I have a soft spot for his sonnets.
EDIT: removed message