Thanks to my brilliant semester 2 timetable I have a whole bunch of 1- and 2- hour gaps between classes that are exactly too long for doing nothing and too short to make it worth going home. Since I now spend much of this time in the library reading newspapers and watching movies I figured I might as well try the traditional thing one does in a library and read a book or two. I don’t really share tastes in reading with my friends who appear to be into new-age/popular philosophy such as The Celestine Prophecy and who I fear will run off and join a cult someday, leaving me sane, rational and friendless. However, I’ve been noticing lately that I do have similar tastes to a reasonable number of people on the SDMB, which has prompted me to ask for recommendations from y’all. But please remember that I haven’t read a book in two years. No epic sagas, okay?
For reference, an arbitrary list of things I like:
Non-fiction
The Book of the New Sun
The Metamorphosis
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Tobias Wolff (author)
American children’s literature from the 70s - 90s
I also enjoy [del]comic books[/del] graphic novels:
Epileptic
Persepolis
Blankets
Maus (the fact that these are all biographies of some sort is irrelevant… I think)
Most of Sandman
Domu and Akira
I don’t read superhero comics for various reasons, only one of which is snobbery
Things I dislike:
Crime fiction
High fantasy
Parody fantasy
Fantasy in general
Harry Potter
Anything featured in Oprah’s book club
Other things:
I read slowly. It can take up to a month for me to finish a novel.
I have a short attention span.
For some reason, I don’t tend to like books about women. I think it might be because male is the “default” gender for characters and female protagonists have to make a big show of how they’re sensitive and capable and empowered by single-handedly raising their son and caring for their ageing mother while keeping the family farm running after their divorce or something. But I am just rationalising here.
I like protagonists with character flaws. Not the “a little hasty and over-eager but overall a good guy” kind but the realistic kind.
Being able to tell when an author is trying REALLY HARD annoys me.
So, you automatically dislike Anna Karenina, One hundred years of solitude, East of Eden, and One hundred years of solitude? Those are all Oprah picks from the last couple of years.
Anyway, I’ll see if I can come up with some non-fiction.
Uhm, you may want to avoid the online fanbase for this book, 'cause they can be some of the most pretentious group of people. Ick.
I mostly reponded to the topic only to say; OMG, you’ve read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. It’s, like, one of my most favouritest books EVER. That is all.
This may be a bit left-field, but I suggest you read Bob Dylan’s memoir, Chronicles. For one thing, it’s not too long. For another, it’s extremely readable; Dylan writes in a relaxed but vivid style that probably no one else could pull off. And for another, you don’t really have to know much about Dylan or folk music to appreciate it; it’s mostly about his early life in Minnesota and his first years in New York City (with a few interludes from his later years). You appear to have an affinity for colorful biography, and this is about as colorful as it gets.
Heh, he mentioned that in the OP.
The best thing about Blankets is the art. I didn’t like the story quite as much.
Another graphic novel to try is Box Office Poison. Great stuff. Or Tricked, by the same author. I’d say Tricked is more tightly written because it was written as a novel while I think Box Office Poison was written as short comics, but both are still excellent.
You might want to check out V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street. Each chapter is its own self-contained vignette, but many of the stories gain an added resonance from the other chapters. There’s a lot of humor, much of it black humor, to deal with a place where life is hard, brutal, and cruelly unfair–but that can also have its own kind of hope and vibrance. The writing style is simple, but the writing itself is subtle.
If you like non-fiction, and you like your reading in small doses, check out any of the Best of Science Writing collections, from any year. You might also want to get a copy of The Ancestor’s Tale, by Richard Dawkins. It’s a huge book, but it’s divided into many small sections. After you read the first two chapters, you can start wherever you’d like in the book, really, and pick and choose which tales (chapters, I suppose, but they’re short) you want to read in whatever order you’d like.
My great-uncle, who loves history with a passion, strongly recommends almost anything by Simon Schama. I’m not as thrilled with Schama’s work, but I know that my feelings about his books run counter to the opinions of people whose taste I usually trust pretty well.
As far as graphic novels go–are you familiar with Ben Kachor’s work? Try The Beauty Supply District.
(as is mentioned in Selkie’s pit thread), but one of her favourite books is Persepolis, an autobiographical work by a woman. Of course, Marjane Satrapi is not a conventional heroine, but one who lets her human flaws show troughout her story – so perhaps FRM needs to look for non-conventional heroines, perhaps in stories written by women. The novels of Jane Austen come to my mind
If you are into horror at all, I suggest you give The Walking Dead a try. It’s a comic/graphic novel ongoing series about the aftermath of, yes, a zombie apocolypse but don’t let that deter you from reading. It’s extremely welll-written and I love it despite the fact I am definitely not a comic fan.
I’d always suggest The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E.Shaw (T.E.Lawrence), it is Lawrence of Arabia’s autobiography, so it is about war which might put you off. Wiked (the one that is a prequal to Wizard of Oz) seems to be very good, though obviously it has a female protagonist. For graphic novels I would highly suggest The Ballad of Halo Jones which has a highly non-conventional female protagonist.
I also loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, one of the few books I’ve re-read. The book I’ve read which is closest to this one is Survivor: a Novel by Chuck Palahnuik, same guy that wrote Fight Club among others.
Some similarities to The Curious Incident… are:
-Very short chapters (with a different chapter numbering system too)
-First person perspective
-Interesting/Unique narrator
-Funny at times, but very dark too
I just got into comics myself, have read the ones you listed, and I have to strongly strongly recommend Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life* and the followup sequels by Bryan Lee. It’s an alterna-hipster-fantasy-comedy comic book that follows a bunch of friends living in Toronto.
And the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik, though I had a devil of a time tracking them down.
Non-Fiction
The last book I read was Into Thin Air, and before that Under the Banner of Heaven by the same author (Krakauer). Into Thin Air is about that disastrous Mount Everest expedition and Under the Banner is a somewhat unfair though interesting look at the Mormon Church.
Fiction
Right now I’m working through My Uncle Napoleon by Pezeskhkzad, about life in Iran pre-revolution, though I keep getting distracted by my new comic book addiction.
