Margaret Atwood is always Atgood. Oryx and Crake was fantastic.

For me, though, anything written by Thomas Merton fills the bill. Reading his work, especially Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, is a life-changing read.

I love, love Peggy and I love Susannah Moodie who mentions the original case in her diaries (and I love fiction set near where I live) but I resisted picking up that book because I knew I was afraid it wasn't going to live up to my expectations. Awesome book. I'm like that with the Handmaid's Tale, loving re-reading it, getting something new each time - or maybe I am bringing something new each time I re-read it.

I read Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon when I was around ten or eleven and so clearly remember being blown away by the realistic depiction of women in it. I'd read only juvenile crap until then so Sweet Valley High didn't seem so cool anymore.

also, taters!

I read Atonement awhile back, on the recommendation of my mother-in-law, and it absolutely blew me away. It starts out really slow and sort of pretentiously-written, but it's framed as a literary triptych, and the second and third parts of the book are emotionally stunning and make you completely re-examine the first section. I read it 4-5 months ago, and I still think about it all the time.

I liked Alias Grace very much. It's another book that really stayed with me.

lol, saucysault!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I adored Alias Grace -- it's definitely in my top 100. (I say top 100 because I just can't list a top three, or five, or ten.)

Lately I read young adult literature almost exclusively, because of my reviewing. But some of those books are literary wonders. Take, for instance, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, or The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. Those would both get four and a half out of five stars for me. I was heartbroken when Lockhart, who was one of three YA finalists for the National Book Award this last year, lost out.

In adult fiction, I'm sticking with Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, and recommending the entire Deptford Trilogy (of which Fifth Business is the first book) wholeheartedly.

These sorts of questions make me itch, because I know there are a million books worth reading out there, books of different genres and meant to be read in different moods. How can you pick just one?

PS. Taz, have you read a lot of Atwood? If you've missed The Blind Assassin, I have to highly recommend it. It won the Booker Prize; it's one of those lovely novels that is a story embedded in a story embedded in a story. One of those stories is about an older woman, one about a young woman, and one is pulp sci fi. It's extremely well-written.

Oops. I forgot to close a tag up there. Sometimes I suck at the internets.

I am currently reading José Donoso's novel The Obscene Bird of Night. I am only just over halfway through it, but based on that alone I project at least a 4.75 star rating: it's a magnificent book.

I loved "The Blind Assassin", brina! ps, I fixed the tag. :)

Finally got around to Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Epic, frustrating, and brilliant. Absolutely fantastic.

I'm currently digging on Jerry Stahl's I, Fatty, written from the point-of-view of Mr. Arbuckle. I'm pretty sure I'll give it a 4 or higher.

Of Course, History of My Life by Giacomo Casanova, which I've mentioned before in these pages, is a 5+. I'm sitting here surrounded by fantastic books. Here's another (4⅝) memoir: A Fly in the Soup, by Charles Simic, the amazing story of my favorite living poet. G.B. Edwards' The Book of Ebenezer Le Page (4⅞) is fiction in memoir form chronicling the life and observations of a man who lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey (I've been meaning to excerpt a chunk of it here).

Also I have Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth, which I read a while ago but loaned to a high school English teacher friend for his class; it's a definite 5 (though if you haven't read her Islam: A Short History, that's even better, particularly for its concise disabusing of incorrect notions present in even the most erudite heads). I just got 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus back from the same friend; it's a well-documented 5. Jacque Pepin's La Technique, 4⅜, will teach you the skills you need to make a great quiche lorraine as well as a kickin' lomo saltado, mouthwatering bun cha, or a simple omelette. I also happen to be staring at a (4⅔) interior design book, Alberto Pinto's Orientalism, really nice stuff, every page full of ideas.

But maybe the most appropriate book looking at em right now is Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time; I'd give it a 5, sure. Now, I'm not saying it's as good as Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (which I would give a 7 if I could), but it's just as clear and true and for some reason there are thick-skulled contrarians who, never having read either, insist on some other biodiversity mechanism, so both remain important reads for every curious human on the planet.

Lush Life - Richard Price. No surprise there, i guess.

Oops, there's an em there that should be me.

Oh yeah, and sorry about the length; books are like potato chips for me, you can't have just one.

Oh, Hugh, the more the merrier, absolutely!

I was really impressed by We Need to Talk About Kevin. Was a big bestseller in the UK, don't think it did as well elsewhere.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - not fiction, but so gripping it might as well be.

Oh yeah, and sorry about the length

I can't imagine you need to apologize about writing a long comment in a thread about reading. :)

Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was the first one that jumped into my mind as well. What a neat book.

I also just finished reading The Shelter of Each Other by Mary Pipher, which is officially a psychology book I guess but so, so, so well-written and gentle and subtle that I read it like a novel rather than a textbook. She talks about the culture's (negative) effect on families, how it's changing families and societies, and what individuals and families can do to counter it. She talks about how things were better in some ways in the past, but without discarding all the improvements of today. She also gives really nuanced but down-to-earth critiques of therapy. The whole thing was like having a wonderful wise older mentor sit down with me over tea and coffeecake and teach me about the world. I just loved it.

"We Need to Talk About Kevin" was incredibly good, TheophileEscargot. I read it after a recommendation here from seanyboy.

On the Origin of Species: Oh yes! I remember reading this in a Science and Religion class and just being blown away by the language in the book. They read the final two sentences on NPR this morning, and they are stunning:

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

I wish I could favorite this thread to come back to later.

Skeletons on the Zahara - a retelling of one of Lincoln's favorite narratives.

The Year of Living Biblically

Ohhh, occhiblu, that book sounds lovely. *runs off to library to place hold*

Seconding brina on the quality of young adult fiction. Although I have only browsed through the section, I have read some amazing passages, a few I would consider brilliant. The genre has already reached mainstream status, and produced the usual dreck that accompanies that rise, but I read in a recent magazine for writers that editors are now also looking for young adult works that reach literary levels due to demand. Hopefully some of the better adult authors will take notice, and those already writing for the youth market will strive harder during rewrites.

I have sworn off novels for 2009, concentrating instead on short stories. I willfully neglected reading short stories all my life, but now that I have found I enjoy writing them moreso than longer fiction, I have a lot of catching up to do in the art. Right now, I am bouncing from Chekhov through O. Henry to Poe.

Ardiril, you must try to read some of Alistair McLeod then. It is rare for me to read a male author, especially one that mainly writes about men but Alistair is magical in his characterisations. I highly recommend his collection "Island".

I've been very unlucky as to find reading books really late in my life. My favourites are quite simple, and rather run-of-the-mill compared to some of the books you all have read.

My first book, and what got me into reading was "Catcher in the Rye", which is still a favourite. Probably my best book of all time (I'm talking pre-accident here, so I don't know how thing's have changed since, which they have: I now have a craving for hot and spicy food). But I love Holden Caulfield's character, and all the trouble's he faces, and I sort of identify with his angst.

Next was "To Kill A Mockingbird", and I liked the pace of the title character's in small town America before we all got so grown up that we forgot everything!

"Angela's Ashes" for Frank McCourt's hard life, and how he got through it all to live long enough to now have been able to publish his own auto-biography of sorts.

"This Boy's Life", of Tobias Wolff, on being a boy--sometimes good--sometimes bad.

And "Papillon" which showed me you could survive anything and still be strong enough to find a good life and a home.

To Kill A Mockingbird is a wonderful book, hadjiboy. I reread it every few years.

I've been rereading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books and I am loving them even more this time around. Each individual book is amazing and as a series they hang together so well; the characters grow and change and the narrative is so gripping that you barely notice how much you're learning about the early 19th century. Soon I will be done, too (I'm on book 17) and I'm already sad and trying to slow down; they go quickly.

Gilead by Marilyn Robinson
Night Watch by Sarah Waters
Jonathan Strange and M. Norrell

NOT very good but got me through a loong plane ride -- Twilight

I wish I could favorite this thread to come back to later.
posted by muddgirl 12 February | 10:59

Bookmark it?

Maybe it's overrated but one of the most memorable books for me is Angela's Ashes. My five out five book is Revolutionary Road. The writing is wonderful. The story is excellent. It's a perfect book in my book. I was sad when it ended. I saw the movie and of course it couldn't compare to the book.

My parents bought me Alias Grace when I was around 18 or 19 for Christmas. I think I only read half of it. Shame! I still have it, in hardcover. I need to read it.

A kid's book - Bridge to Terabithia. I somehow missed it while growing up. I'd guess it's aimed at tweeners rather than young adults, but it certainly held up to an adult reading it.

Speaking of short stories, I read a collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne once and liked it. Now with the Interwebs, they all seem to be online!

The last five-star book was Cannery Row by Steinbeck.

"It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."

Sarah Waters' Night Watch. I'm in awe of her ability to plot, and there are incredible set pieces in that book that put you right in London during the war.

I am also deeply appreciative of Margaret Atwood. If you like her work, I would especially recommend Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy: the sort of fantasy meets gritty future reality novel that you can't out down.
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are my other two favorite authors (by which I mean that I read everything they publish). Neil Gaiman's American Gods is a strange and wonderful journey across and through America.
Finally, an honorable mention to Connie Willis, especially if you are into witty SciFi. I listened to Doomsday Book on audiobook recently - and stayed awake all night as I couldn't bear to stop! To Say Nothing Of The Dog is also amusing -- a great take on Three Men in a Boat!

I'll read the Marge Piercy. Gaiman is one of my faves, and I read everything by him. Also a fan of Pratchett, but not quite as much. Love Connie Willis, but I couldn't continue with Doomsday Book. I just can't read books about illness/virus/plague, though I did recently read The Brief History of the Dead, and liked it quite a bit - but there was very little exposition of the fictional pandemic.

Nthing the adoration of Margaret Atwood.

I'm in the middle of We Need to talk About Kevin and it makes me VERY glad that I'm only willing to be Auntie Brujita rather than Mommy.

I'm not sure if I liked Anathem primarily because it was actually good, or because it was the first proper sci/spec-fiction book I had read and I was pleasantly surprised that it made some sense and was compelling. It primarily made me miss being in school.

For definite 5/5s, I also have just finished Eden's Outcasts, a biography of Amos Bronson and Louisa May Alcott, which I found fascinating as an exploration of the sometimes conflicting, sometimes intersecting loyalties to family and to ideals. It was also particularly poignant to read about Emerson's faithfulness as a friend to the family- helping to educate the girls with discussion and access to his library, repeatedly loaning money to help them through difficult times, making sure they had people to care for them when they were sick- sometimes more reliable a provider than Bronson was usually able to be. Just reading of the richness of the intellectual life that the people in their circle of friends were able to lead makes me wistful and envious. Never mind that I wouldn't know how to participate in such a group even if I could find it.

And now I'm winding my way through The Given Day, which I have been waiting for since hearing the author read from his manuscript at a writers' conference a couple of years ago on Cape Cod, making me an instant admirer of the way he builds and plays with tension. Well worth the wait.

As I mentioned in the other book thread, I've recently re-read Pillars of the Earth which I would rate highly but there is another Fowles book that haunts me still.

That one is The Magus. For weeks after reading that book I didn't believe anything anybody said or did. I'm still fascinated by the way he created layer after layer of deception.

Ooh, I'm so glad you asked this. I'm always looking for more recommendations (not that I need them)!

Recent 4+/5 stars: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, which seemed to me just the perfect novel - plot-driven, but with interesting, three-dimensional, and dynamic characters.

I must be the only person on earth who didn't like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Perhaps it's because I'd just gotten through reading all of Orhan Pamuk's novels, which very much fall under the same confusing, melancholy, culture clash, pseudo magical realism category, and I was just sick of the whole genre. (If you're looking for Pamuk recommendations: My Name Is Red and The Black Book are by far my favorites.)

Oh, and I would suggest avoiding Pamuk's The New Life and The White Castle at all costs. Snow is somewhere in the middle.

Damn, and I misspelled The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Sorry for the triple posts.