Comments on: Looking for some awesome fiction

Question: Looking for some awesome fiction

Afroblanco — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:36:33 -0800

My book queue is empty, and my brain craves fiction! Could you please recommend some books? Favorites include : DeLillo, Murakami, Pynchon, Bolaño, Lethem, Barthleme, Franzen, Chabon, DFW, Bulgakov, Rushdie, David Mitchell, Gabriel García Márquez, Mark Z. Danielewski, Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, George Saunders, Joe Hill, and Raymond Chandler

I know, I'm all over the map! But if you can find a common thread in some of these, I'd love to hear your suggestions.

By: rabbitrabbit

rabbitrabbit — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:38:38 -0800

Have you read The Night Circus yet?

By: KokuRyu

KokuRyu — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:38:44 -0800

Sacred Games, by Vikram Chandra.

By: showbiz_liz

showbiz_liz — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:38:59 -0800

Italo Calvino, maybe Cosmicomics.

By: RolandOfEld

RolandOfEld — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:41:05 -0800

The Passage by Cronin wasn't bad. I haven't touched the sequel yet.

By: rabbitrabbit

rabbitrabbit — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:42:51 -0800

You might also enjoy Umberto Eco or Margaret Atwood.

By: GenjiandProust

GenjiandProust — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:44:43 -0800

Sacred Games is deeply compelling.

Ægypt by John Crowley is a monster of a four-volume novel, mixing the mundane and the fantastic in a quite amazing way. If four books seem too log, you could try Crowley with the equally punchy Little, Big

By: kidbritish

kidbritish — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:44:55 -0800

Jorge Luis Borges, definitely. To me, his work is similar to Pynchon and Danielewski. Maybe start with Ficciones. I haven't read a lot of Borges but I've liked what I read.

Maybe William Gibson too. He's a big fan of Pynchon & Borges, but not exactly similar.

By: Cosine

Cosine — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:45:34 -0800

The Sportswriter - Richard Ford

By: FAMOUS MONSTER

FAMOUS MONSTER — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:46:17 -0800

Ficciones by Borges. Borges was the common thread I spotted in your books although I can't honestly say why.

Also: Your list suggests you might enjoy the book Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. I happened upon it while trying to find books that made me feel like House of Leaves did. I have never read any other Palahniuk and I've been told not to bother, but Haunted wound up being exactly the book I wanted to read.

You might enjoy Thomas Ligotti as well.

By: Sidhedevil

Sidhedevil — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:48:28 -0800

Helen Oyeyemi. Anything by her.

By: Doleful Creature

Doleful Creature — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:49:13 -0800

Based on that list I would say:

Jose Luis Borges, post-haste (this is a good collection)

And on the off-chance that you've already read his entire oeuvre and simply neglected to mention then I'll recommend Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun.

Those should give you something to sink your teeth into.

By: rmd1023

rmd1023 — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:51:37 -0800

Octavia Butler's books. She's a wonderful writer. Also, for something kind of warm and fuzzy, Harpo Marx's autobiography ("Harpo Speaks") is an enjoyable read.

By: lagreen

lagreen — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:51:50 -0800

I, too, love DeLillo, Murakami, DFW, Bulgakov, and George Saunders. I would recommend "Little, Big" by John Crowley. It was my favorite book this year. If you'd be willing to read YA fantasy fiction, I enjoyed Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy as much as the other authors listed above. I'll be watching this thread for recommendations, too!

By: Leezie

Leezie — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:52:03 -0800

I very much enjoyed Skippy Dies by Paul Murray. The prose and story is a lot like Chabon.

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:53:26 -0800

The City and the City, China Miéville. It's quite different from any other Miéville, just so you know.

By: BibiRose

BibiRose — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:54:00 -0800

Vladimir Nabokov, Ada.

Maybe also The Recognitions by William Gaddis.

Both of these may seem kind of old-fashioned and English-majory next to your list, though.

By: dfan

dfan — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:55:11 -0800

Seconding The Book of the New Sun.

Also, only because your list of favorite authors is very close to mine, and I'm currently rereading it: Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books.

By: grobstein

grobstein — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:56:47 -0800

Jose Luis Borges, post-haste (this is a good collection)

And on the off-chance that you've already read his entire oeuvre and simply neglected to mention then I'll recommend Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun.

I agree with both of these, but the thing I thought when I saw your list of favorites was -- you are at high risk for Gene Wolfe. You are in real danger of being blown away. Book of the New Sun is a fantastic place to start but you may find yourself seeking out his other books when you're done.

By: munyeca

munyeca — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:58:36 -0800

Philip Roth. Junot Diaz. Also, probably 1/3 of my AskMeFi comments say this, but Lydia Davis! Always Lydia Davis.

By: 2or3things

2or3things — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:02:36 -0800

Have you read anything by Robert Coover? He fits in very nicely with the Pynchon-Lethem-Barthelme-Saunders crowd. I highly recommend The Public Burning.

By: munyeca

munyeca — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:05:36 -0800

Also! Denis Johnson.

By: nicwolff

nicwolff — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:07:37 -0800

The Dog Stars

By: carsonb

carsonb — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:08:22 -0800

I say Eco too. Baudolino then maybe Foucault's Pendulum and quite possibly The Island of the Day Before.

By: perhapses

perhapses — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:09:18 -0800

Anything by László Krasznahorkai.

By: jeffamaphone

jeffamaphone — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:34:30 -0800

I think you might like Atwood. I'm sure you'd Calvino. I have some of both if you'd like to borrow.

By: barnoley

barnoley — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:34:42 -0800

I love almost everyone on your list, and to me the next logical choice for you is Paul Auster. I would start with the New York Trilogy.

By: Mr.Know-it-some

Mr.Know-it-some — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:49:52 -0800

The Booker-winning White Tiger.

By: bluefly

bluefly — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:50:50 -0800

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann - probably one of the best books I've read this year. I've been giving it to all of my friends for their birthdays.

By: hurdy gurdy girl

hurdy gurdy girl — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:59:10 -0800

Looking over your list, I think you'd like Michael Ondaatje's most recent novel, The Cat's Table.

From the New York Review of Books:

In The Cat's Table, we are both certain and uncertain of our narrator's identity: that's to say, Ondaatje toys with the degree to which the narrator resembles the author himself. His name is Michael; now in his late sixties, he is a writer; he speaks to us on occasion, as in the quotation above, as if he were at the podium at Toronto's Harbourfront Festival. He relates the story of his three-week crossing by ship from Ceylon to England, in 1954, at the age of eleven—which is, indeed, the year in which Ondaatje traveled to Great Britain, and the age he was when he did so. How much the young Ondaatje resembled, in reality, the heedless and exuberant wrongdoer he describes—who with his two friends Ramadhin and Cassius "established one rule. Each day we had to do at least one thing that was forbidden"—is ultimately an irrelevance; just as it is irrelevant, really, whether the ship Oronsay of Ondaatje's childhood actually carried a rabid millionaire cursed by a monk, a troupe of acrobats, a ladylike spy, or a prisoner in chains. The reality that Ondaatje creates on the page has the force of life itself, and that is all that matters.

It's beautifully written yet in many ways more accessible than some of Ondaatje's previous work (and I say this as an Ondaatje fan). It has a good balance between gorgeous prose, compelling characters, and well-paced story. Definitely a highlight of my 2012 reading list.

By: mai

mai — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:17:12 -0800

China Mieville - I loved the City and the City and I loved Embassytown. I didn't finish Kraken or King Rat.

By: eak

eak — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:19:34 -0800

Looks like you have the same taste in books as me.

Reading 1Q84 inspired me to read a lot more Russian lit; have you considered checking some of Chekhov, Tolstoy, or Dostoevsky out? Another book Murakami mentions in 1Q84 that I want to read: Isak Dinesen's Out Of Africa.

By: snorkmaiden

snorkmaiden — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:29:53 -0800

The Bad Girl, by Mario Vargas Llosa.

Also try Robertson Davies, Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, and Carlos Ruiz Zafron (I've only read The Wind in the Shadows so far but it was so. so. good.).

By: Leontine

Leontine — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:37:53 -0800

Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau

By: Rustic Etruscan

Rustic Etruscan — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:02:02 -0800

I second the Nabokov recommendation, but Ada is definitely the most Nabokoffputting book there is. I'd recommend Pale Fire to get yourself acclimated before taking a potentially lethal dose.

By: R2WeTwo

R2WeTwo — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:14:48 -0800

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. You can listen to an excerpt here.

By: lathrop

lathrop — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:16:57 -0800

Believe it or not: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.

One of the best ways into Nabokov is to read his collected short stories; they are amazing and led me to read everything else.

By: newmoistness

newmoistness — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:20:40 -0800

Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar
and
The Obscene Bird of Night by Jose Donoso come to mind

By: turgid dahlia 2

turgid dahlia 2 — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:25:14 -0800

You list a couple of my favourites above, and I've read enough of the others to know the "feel" you seem to like, so allow me to suggest: Kazuo Ishigiro, Richard Brautigan, Paul Bowles, Knut Hamsun, Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, Henry de Montherlant, I guess possibly Neal Stephenson, and, actually, I don't think you can ever go wrong with grabbing the first thing you see that has been reprinted by NYRB Classics.

(I've gone ahead and assumed you meant Donald Barthelme and not any of the inferior, impostor Barthelmes.)

By: deliciae

deliciae — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:31:31 -0800

Italo Calvino! I love everything I've read by him but If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is still one of my favorites years after reading it for the first time.

By: newmoistness

newmoistness — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:34:56 -0800

Also, you don't offer any opinion of William Faulkner, but if you've never read him you'd probably find his novels immensely rewarding. Two caveats, though: First, everybody seems to recommend The Sound And The Fury as the best place to start with Faulkner, but I think that's actually a disastrous recommendation and would instead go with As I Lay Dying, Light in August, or The Hamlet. Second, his novels are usually tough to get started with, so be prepared to 'spot' him about 50 pages or so before the book just completely sucks you in.

By: Rustic Etruscan

Rustic Etruscan — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:42:15 -0800

As official Seconder of Opinions, I approve of turgid dahlia's NYRB Classics recommendation. I haven't yet read a bad book from that press. They may not always run to my taste - The Winners by Julio Cortázar uses stereotyped characters to make social commentary - but they're always worth my time.

Also, lathrop is right. Go read Moby-Dick right now. Don't skip the chapter about whale categorization.

By: jamjam

jamjam — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:48:43 -0800

I recommend Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's incomparable The Leopard (Il Gattopardo in the original Italian, but native speakers have assured me that the standard English translation is excellent).

I remember the beauty of the language and metaphor of this book as so overwhelming and compelling that it took me several moments to realize where and even who I was when I happened to look up from it at long, long intervals.

Tomasi was the last in a line of minor princes in Sicily, and he had long contemplated writing a historical novel based on his great-grandfather, Don Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, another Prince of Lampedusa. After the Lampedusa palace was bombed and pillaged by Allied forces in World War II, Tomasi sank into a lengthy depression, and began to write Il Gattopardo as a way to combat it.

Which makes him a displaced aristocrat very like Nabokov (or De Sade, for that matter), but whereas resentment and vicious spite are never far below the surface in Nabokov, The Leopard is the purest distillation of elegiac and deeply loving melancholy I expect to ever have the opportunity to experience.

By: benzenedream

benzenedream — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:56:59 -0800

Seconding Umberto Eco, specifically Foucault's Pendulum, and Pale Fire by Nabokov. Lolita and Pnin are also great reads.

Selected Satires of Lucian might also work for you. His sense of the absurd is wonderful.

1001 Arabian Nights is surprisingly readable, and has a very adult sense of narrative. I have not read anything other than Burton's translation so can't comment on which other translations might be better.

Kafka's sense of the absurd might also work for you. Some people don't find him funny at all but I found most of his stories hilarious. The Castle and The Trial are both great.

By: StrangerInAStrainedLand

StrangerInAStrainedLand — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:06:51 -0800

Your list is eerily close to my own. At risk of our literary tastes becoming identical, I would suggest to you Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins, even if you've read him before and it didn't strike your fancy. It's about everything, and beets.

By: mintcake!

mintcake! — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:29:56 -0800

We seem to have a lot of crossover, and I recently enjoyed I'm Trying To Reach You by Barbara Browning. Bet you'd like some Mark Leyner as well - his recent one, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack was great. Maybe Donald Antrim? Perhaps start with Elect Mr. Robinson For A Better World. I really like Alexei Sayle's fiction, and I always want people to read The Roaches Have No King by Daniel Evan Weiss - it's available for almost nothing in the Amazon marketplace, and it's one of my favorites. Hell, most everything that came out of that whole mid-'90s High Risk/Serpent's Tail situation was worth a look. YAY BOOKS.

By: mippy

mippy — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:33:18 -0800

If you like Lethem, you might like Jonathan Coe. I'd go for The Rotter's Club or What A Carve Up! (it's called something else in the US and I don't recall what, or why).

I've also really enjoyed Empire Falls by Richard Russo recently - read it straight after Kavalier and Clay - I think I was in a Pulitzer phase as I read The Sportswriter around the same time - and enjoyed it much more.

By: mippy

mippy — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:38:28 -0800

Also, Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan is a mess, but a very funny, entertaining mess.

The presence of King and Chandler on your list makes me think you'd be up for some crime recommendations - I really like the Tess Monaghan novels at the moment, by Laura Lippmann. In A Strange City isn't the first one in the series, but it's my favourite so far and would be a good place to start. I dismissed crime fiction for years because of the lurid, bestseller-claim-clad covers, but Lippmann is smart and sharp and gives a really good sense of her Baltimore setting.

Seconding Alexei Sayle - Barcelona Chairs, the title story from his collection, still amuses me more than a decade after reading it.

By: Sidhedevil

Sidhedevil — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:57:30 -0800

What A Carve Up! was published in the US as The Winshaw Legacy. "What a carve up" isn't an idiom here, and the Sid James et al. film was released in the US under the title No Place Like Homicide, so the title would just have been meaningless to US readers on two levels.

By: lathrop

lathrop — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:00:21 -0800

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:21:19 -0800

Thomas Ligotti
Jorge Luis Borges
Jim Thompson
Kathe Koja
Jonathan Carroll
John Le Carré
G. K. Chesterton
Clive Barker
Peter Straub
Theodore Sturgeon

By: gauche

gauche — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:45:36 -0800

I can't believe I'm the first person to mention Neil Gaiman. If you can get into reading comics, you will love his Sandman series, which are collected in ten trade paperbacks. Otherwise his prose is easy to read, fun, and often thought-provoking. I'd start with some of his short stories, such as his Smoke & Mirrors collection.

I second the recommendations for Borges, Eco, and Mieville. You might also like Mark Helprin, particularly Winter's Tale or A Soldier of the Great War. And you might also want to check out some of the novels of Richard Powers.

By: 168

168 — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:54:28 -0800

The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt

By: outfielder

outfielder — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 20:41:06 -0800

I think you might like A.L. Kennedy.

By: saltwater

saltwater — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 22:12:23 -0800

Seconding Lydia Davis.

By: Joseph Gurl

Joseph Gurl — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:06:33 -0800

Some good recs. I'll nth Borges, Gaddis, Cortazar, Calvino and raise you some of the big Anthony Burgess books: Earthly Powers and The Long Day Wanes.

By: bwonder2

bwonder2 — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:53:10 -0800

The wonderful W G Sebald and Teju Cole's first novel Open City.

By: ninebelow

ninebelow — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 05:28:41 -0800

Seconding Calvino, Lem and Kundera above. Some others along the same lines as your list where I've picked one novel but the whole catalogue fits: Rupert Thomson (Dreams Of Leaving), Steve Erickson (Rubicon Beach), Christopher Priest (The Islanders). No women on either your or my list so I'll recommend the short fiction of Kelly Link and Margo Lanagan. You might also be interested in exploring the slipstream genre (if you can call it a genre).

By: BibiRose

BibiRose — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 07:24:53 -0800

I agree with the Arabian Nights. I've been hanging back from recommending Ovid's Metamorphoses because I can't think of a translation I really like. I've linked to Ted Hughes's Tales from Ovid which is a selection. The review also explains some of what Ovid does that I think you would like.

Roman literature is so cosmopolitan, such a literature of assimilation and subtext and sometimes exhaustion-- the kind of creative exhaustion that leads a writer to create a new literary world. Very very little of it comes off well (or indeed is even intelligible) in translation though. But Ovid does at times, at least in the Metamorphoses. And then maybe Petronius. Also, Robert Graves's I, Claudius, and Tacitus and Suetonius to go with it.. And Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. Seriously, go on a Roman binge and link up some of these readings.

By: BibiRose

BibiRose — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 07:27:38 -0800

Too Loud a Solitude. A sweet, sweet little book.

By: Lentrohamsanin

Lentrohamsanin — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 07:30:46 -0800

A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys

By: BibiRose

BibiRose — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:00:40 -0800

You should also give Rebecca Goldstein a try, at least for Properties of Light.

I also think is still Annie Proulx's most interesting work. It has a meta aspect that seems inevitable once she thought of it, and it reads like the work of the historian that Proulx is, with some really amazing linguistic stuff. It was her first long fiction and you can still feel the short-fiction writer in it, which I think is also a feature of some of the other writers on your list (whether they have written actual short ficiton or not).

By: TheGoodBlood

TheGoodBlood — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:01:02 -0800

Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual.

By: BibiRose

BibiRose — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:02:46 -0800

One more, and I'll stop for a while. A Novel Called Heritage. Amazingly energetic yet modern, also like a lot on your list.

By: taltalim

taltalim — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:12:44 -0800

Seconding Life A User's Manual. I like many, many of the things in your initial list, and Life A User's Manual is my favorite book. The structure is a bit complex, and it takes a bit of time to get into, but totally worth it in the end. Feel free to memail me if you ever want to discuss it.

Also a very big Borges fan here. He writes absolutely incredible stories.

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:12:56 -0800

Wow, what a great thread! So many solid recommendations, this ought to keep me busy.

I've read Calvino, Eco, Palahniuk, Roth, Auster, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Neil Stephenson, Kafka, Straub, and Burgess, and loved them all. Saw the movie they made from Housekeeping, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I've also heard Gilead is really good. Tom Robbins and Milan Kundera I read a long time ago, not sure I'd like them as much now as I did years ago. I liked the first two-thirds of Winter's Tale, and found the rest to be kinda impenetrable. Moby Dick is one of the few books that's ever defeated me. I got about 300 pages into it, and then had to execute a rather life-changing cross-country move, and never picked it back up. May have to give that one another try.

Clearly I need to read some Borges.

And there are just ... so many incredible recommendations in this thread. I want to go and mark every response "best answer", but I know that annoys people.

Instead, I will just say, "thank you".

Question resolved.

By: BibiRose

BibiRose — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:20:23 -0800

Shoot, I meant to say Postcards is my favorite work of Proulx's.

By: Lentrohamsanin

Lentrohamsanin — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 12:36:57 -0800

If you want to try an interesting Melville without going up against Moby Dick again, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities is pretty fascinating.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:00:19 -0800

I didn't mention it before because this slim volume has defeated me thrice already and recommending something I haven't read is poor form. But you and I we've read a lot of the same authors and since it remains near the top of my to-read queue maybe you'll want to add it to yours: On The Edge of Reason by Miroslav Krleža

By: BeBoth

BeBoth — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:06:56 -0800

Might also check out your library. Librarian know their books, natch. And this might be considered cheating, but I have used this service from the Seattle Public Library, even though I don't live in the Emerald City. It's fabulous!!

By: moons in june

moons in june — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 17:38:04 -0800

Looks like I am pretty late to this thread, but The Book of Disquiet by Passoa, and The Village on Horseback by Jesse Ball.