Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with books and novels

The perfect novel?

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:28:34 -0800

Help me find that perfect novel for a Christmas present. Sorry to post this anonymously, but someone close to the recipient is one my contacts!

Now, I spent a good part of yesterday perusing book stores, eventually walking away empty handed.

The person receiving this book is a mid-fifties male who is an avid reader of good popular fiction. E.g. really likes Frank McCourt; really dislikes Dan Brown.

I considered Netherland by O'Neill but decided against it because I haven't read it and thought it might be too political. (Is it?) So if you need a gage to go by then it'd be McCourt.

The suggestion needn't be a heavy story, for well-written, humorous, insightful prose works just as well. What I want is a story that will stick with this person for time to come.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions.

Academic novels from student perspective

alicat — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:21:46 -0800

I'm looking for academic novels from the student's perspective (apparently this is a subgenre of campus novels called varsity novels). Bonus for books considered "young adult." Ideally, I want books like Tam Lin by Pamela Dean: fiction set at a university, narrated by a student, written for an adolescent audience.

But I'll also take adult fiction such as Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Novels that include students among other point-of-view characters, such as Jane Smiley's Moo, are also fair game.

Already on the list:

YA
Ivy League novels by Diana Peterfreund
Light Years by Tammar Stein

Adult
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand
Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
Joe College by Tom Perotta
The Magicians by Lev Grossman

I'll take any genre: literary, mystery, SF/fantasy ... Thanks!

Pulp Filter

roger ackroyd — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:53:39 -0800

Pulp Filter: I'm looking for books (fiction or non) that read like the recent Bond films: dark, thrilling, brutal, and glamorous.

Recommend a sequence of novels leading from action trash to literary treasure

hifimofo — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:21:50 -0800

I am looking for recommendations for a sequence of novels that might lead an adult fan of very trashy action to the real gold. The sequence needs to start at Matthew Reilly's Temple and I don't know where it would end. It doesn't have to make it to Ulysses or Gravity's Rainbow^* but if you think you could plot such a path then go for it. If you want to specify what each step gains/loses I'd love to see that, too.

Take as many steps as you like. Given that people's tastes tend to change slowly more steps might be better.

You don't have to stick to the action genre, but please no horror. Sci-fi is okay, but the reader in question is not a big fan of it.

Thanks

(I'm secretly hoping we are going to witness the birth pangs of a giant flowchart of readerly goodness.)

^*Insert actual pinnacle of literature here.

Perhaps a chair coated with glue?

BitterOldPunk — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:09:03 -0800

With NaNoWriMo looming ever nearer, I would like to hear your best tips, tricks, habits, and techniques for staying chained to the keyboard. Realizing that the point is to get 50,000 words written, I've jettisoned all illusions of producing quality, publishable prose. My only goal is to finish without having to copypaste "All work and no play makes BOP a dull boy" five thousand times. I have a (rather vague) outline, I have some preliminary character sketches, and I have every expectation that the first ten thousand words will flow fairly quickly. But. I suck at follow-through. I have the attention span of the common housefly. So, writers: how do I stick with it, fight through discouragment and ennui, and produce 50,000 reasonably coherent words?

Note: I'm not looking for tips like "prepare moar" or "work your plan". I'm looking for how to stay motivated when the fun stuff stops and the hard work begins.

Help me find this possibly Young Adult novel.

Skoloxia — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:28:42 -0800

BookFilter: I'm looking for a novel that I read several times in the early '90s; despite having read and enjoyed it several times, I've forgotten the title and author! I have some very fuzzy, and possibly misleading, details:

- It was published in the late '80s-early '90s, give or take a decade.
- The protagonist is a high school girl who falls for a college student.
- She has day of the week underwear.
- She thinks a one night stand is called a nightstand.
- The girl's older sister is named Sarah who has saved a condom in a jar.
- The college guy she falls for is named Moishe/Moshe; he goes to Columbia University and is a misanthropist of sorts.
- The girl and Moishe have a troubled relationship and eventually break up, possibly over a misunderstanding.
- He takes a college age girl to a dance he and the protagonist were supposed to attend together.

I'm pretty sure it's not by Norma Fox Mazer, Norma Klein or even Judy Blume. I've pored through MeFi archives, Google search, Wikipedia's lists of books by genre and year, and even some ALA lists.

Halp! I have a feeling I'll be horrified about having enjoyed it so much in my youth when I finally get my mitts on it again, but the complete blank in my memory has been nagging me for months!

Recommendations for erotica

ninebelow — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:56:03 -0800

Recommendations for erotica I'm interested in reading erotic novels but I need a bit of guidance. Virgin Books are the biggest erotica publisher in the UK and I've dipped into a few of their titles at random but they've been uniformly awful. Google has not been my friend either because there is a lot of chaff out there. So I am looking for (ideally) a good reviews/recommendation site or (failing that) individual recommendations for novels, authors or publishers.

I'm a straight male interested in the porn rather than romance end of the spectrum and when I say novels I mean actual printed books. Bonus points for science fiction or fantasy recommendations (although I am not after a million recommendations for Jacqueline Carey).

Help me drag my uncle out of the literary dark ages!

badmoonrising — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:04:13 -0800

My uncle recently mentioned to me that he's never read any book written by a woman. Apparently this is because he doesn't think they'll be any good - he seems to think women can only write romance novels. I find this both horrific and hard to believe, but he seemed serious. So, Hive Mind, I need your help in drafting a list of the very best books written by female authors. Help me teach him the error of his ways! I've checked out a few previous questions, but I am somewhat hampered in my list-making by the fact that many of the obvious classics (and most of the books that sprang to my mind) are books that I think he will not enjoy, e.g. the works of the Brontë sisters or Jane Austen, or even Toni Morrison.

Specifically, he likes crime novels and thrillers, and fast-paced storylines without too many descriptive passages. (Or, as he put it, books "where it doesn't take the author three pages to describe a table.") So suggestions vaguely along those lines would be especially appreciated. I immediately suggested Agatha Christie and Patricia Cornwall to him, but crime is not generally my preferred genre so I'm having trouble coming up with much else.

The books do not have to be thrillers, but I suspect he will abandon anything too romance/family-orientated. So no Pride and Prejudice or The Thorn Birds, please. We're coming up with a list for a rather conservative, old-fashioned, golf- and rugby-loving Englishman in his late sixties. (So no Tipping the Velvet either!)

So, AskMeFites, please fire away!

(Also, I'm well aware of how sexist and misogynistic my uncle may seem, and I'm not interested in hearing any commentary on that, thank you. I myself want to batter him over the head with something heavy until he sees the error of his ways, but he IS family and I love the guy. So if I can rein in my violent urges, then I hope AskMeFi can too.)

Beyond 2666

Xurando — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:43:31 -0800

Recently finished 2666. It is on a pedestal by itself, with my award for "Best Novel Ever." Now, everything I try to read seems jaded, inferior, or doesn't measure up. Help me get beyond this and find something interesting to read

Help me keep my nose inside a book all summer

CrazyLemonade — Sat, 16 May 2009 10:40:06 -0800

I need to compile my summer reading list ASAP. Please give me some suggestions. Two years ago I asked for some book suggestions and MeFis, as always, turned out to be great at just that. This time I'm looking for books to keep me entertained all during the summer, as I'll have a lot of free time (I'm a teacher and master's student).

I like fiction novels, long-ish, and prefer if they're recent books (as in, "not in the mood for oldish classics").

Books I've read and liked (some of them because I learned of them in here in the Green):

Middlesex
The Historian
I Know This Much Is True
The Time Traveller's Wife
The Kite Runner
Life of Pi
Pillars of the Earth (and) World without End
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Books I read and didn't like very much:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay
The Loser's Club (I think amazon suggested that one, and it sucked)

I figure whoever's read any of these recognizes them without needing the author.

I know there's already tons of questions about books here, but in this community with lots of types of readers, I'm hoping you can help a lot better than Amazon's "people who bought this, also bought this."

Comic Relief

natalie b — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:21:34 -0800

[BookRecommendationFilter] Looking for funny, happy books. My job has me stressed, and reading the news is depressing me. Now that it is finally spring, I'd just like to sit outside and read something that puts a smile on my face.

I read mostly sci-fi/fantasy, and my favorite laugh-out-loud authors are Terry Pratchett and Connie Willis. I even admit to enjoying the Chicks in Chainmail series edited by Esther Friesner.

Also good are books not necessarily thought of as comic novels but that are written with a wry sense of humor (See Martha Wells' The Wheel of the Infinite)

So, I am looking books aimed at adults that are amusing/funny. Non-genre fiction is fine, too.

Please scare me.

Addlepated — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:35:23 -0800

I want a book that I have to put into the freezer. I've read this question, which was looking for thrillers, and this post looking for short stories, but I can't seem to find a thread looking for scary, engrossing novels where supernatural is okay. I read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova a few months ago and was positively enchanted with it. Not only was it creepy as hell, the descriptions were so well-drawn that I felt like I was there and ended up buying Bulgarian folk music on iTunes and looking up pictures of the locations for days after. Similarly, Scott Smith's The Ruins also really stuck with me and put me in a pensive mood for a couple of days after reading - it was just so, so awful, what happened. I want more books like these.

Things I've read (most of it recently): everything by Stephen King, Matheson's I Am Legend and Hell House, Straub's Floating Dragon and Julia, everything by Ellis except for Lunar Park, House of Leaves, Relic, Joe Hill's short stories and Heart Shaped Box, Sebastian Fitzek's Therapy, all Thomas Harris, Barker's Sacrament, all Shirley Jackson, and The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons.

Honestly, I liked The Historian and The Ruins so very much that I've been avoiding reading anything since then because I feel it will be hard to find anything to measure up! Heart-Shaped Box was close, but not dark enough; Therapy was dark, but went by too fast; The House Next Door was great but I thought it was more sad than scary. Help?

What are your favorite novels from an aesthetic/writing style point of view?

archagon — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:19:33 -0800

What are your favorite novels from an aesthetic/writing style point of view? I'm aware of this thread, but it seems more specific than my question. (Perhaps not?)

21st Century Fiction

netbros — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:32:58 -0800

Who are the new exciting, young novelists of the 21st century? I suddenly find myself with a lot more time on my hands for reading. A couple months ago you gave me a good list of biographies. Now I'm looking for new writing talent that has appeared since the turn of the century. I like historical fiction and action/adventure, but generally just like a good read. Thanks, as always, for your assistance.

Fictional Almost-Factual Encounters

taramosalata — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 02:39:21 -0800

Seeking relatively well-known, canon-caliber fictional accounts of imaginary encounters between actual, historically significant figures -- especially encounters that could well have taken place, but which we know did not or remain undocumented. Philip Levine's poem "On the Meeting of Garcia Lorca and Hart Crane" typifies what I'm looking for. Mark Twain's _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ does not (respectable evidence out there of a historical Arthur notwithstanding). The literary field is rife with examples, I know -- say, some novel casting Charles Lindbergh and Adolf Hitler into a tete-a-tete. But, ack, I'm drawing a blank. Two addenda:

1) I'm not really looking for contemporary sci-fi, especially as possible encounters wouldn't have required time travel....

2) I confess disapproval of AskMeFi users who amass answers as shortcuts to journalistic brainstorming or dissertation research. Your answers will purely be helping me to compile a personal reading list around a curious subgenre.

Thanks!

How do you read vividly?

Tufa — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:07:58 -0800

Since I began a reading life (at about age eight), I have had a problem: my mind automatically places action in just a few places familiar to me from my life: my house, the main street of my hometown. Whether the action in a novel takes place in 16th century Scotland, or the Black Forest, or under the Unisphere. Are there ways to get around this, or to learn to read fiction more actively, and, fantastically/creatively? Do you actively visualize a setting when you read? Do you see anything at all? (Does viewing a movie adaptation change this?) Do you study a historical novel's setting and time before or while you read? I have been reading Obama's Dreams From My Father, and searching on Flickr tags when he mentions a place name. It helps.

Open a book, step into another place.

cloudsandstars — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:19:43 -0800

I like novels where the setting is almost as much of a star as the characters. What should I be reading? Reading is most enjoyable to me when I can vividly and clearly imagine another place, through the descriptive words given to us by the author. To cite a few examples: The Chronicles of Narnia, Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series, and the Mitford series by Jan Karon. I especially love it when the book includes a well-drawn map of the city or world. I realize this is a common facet of fantasy novels, but I'd prefer more cuddly hometown type stories, as I'm not so much into YA, sci-fi, or fantasy these days. What fictional place can I delve into next?

Selling novels/finding a literary agent

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:08:18 -0800

How does one sell a (mystery) novel? I recently wrote a 100,000 word mystery novel, and the handful of people who have read it so far have told me that it is not awful (although it needs revising and rewriting in places). I want to take the next step and sell my work to someone. How do I go about doing this? Do I send the manuscript directly to publishers, or do I find an agent? How would one go about doing this?

Please note that I am not interested in "copylefting" the novel or anything like that. I'd rather sell it for a pittance, give up all of the rights to the work, and never have a single copy be published, than put it up somewhere on the web where millions of people read it for free. This isn't the great American novel, it is a bit of hackwork for which I hope to get some money.

Details and comments:

1) I read that fiction manuscripts from unpublished authors should be 75k to 120k words long. Is this correct? Should I flesh out/cut down on what I've written?

2) The working title is a quote from a song and quotes from other books to start off the section headings. Are there copyright issues for an unpublished manuscript?

I wrote a novel. Now what?

letahl — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:32:07 -0800

Can I use viral marketing techniques to get my first novel published? I wrote a novel (Nanowrimo), and I actually like it. Its still in draft format, so it needs some editing, but it is structurally sound. My question is, "Now what?"

A website with a little popularity is going to do an article on me and my novel, and it goes up on Monday. It should drive some traffic to the lowkey writing blog I started recently. I have NOT done much to this blog, just used it more as a static page to point potential clients to for freelance writing assignments. So what should I do to that site by Monday to further a goal of getting this thing published?

Similarly, is there a way I can use viral marketing to promote an unpublished book such that I don't have to go sending unsolicited manuscripts all over the place? The latter sounds like a pretty brutal way of trying to get published.

About me: I'm a freelance lawyer and have published academic articles, magazine articles, and done a good bit of freelance writing. This is my first novel.

Resources: I have a well-developed blog on my primary area of scholarly interest, but its not on point with my novel. I could potentially use that as leverage for promoting my book. I'm on the major social networking sites (facebook, twitter, linkedin, inactive on myspace), so I am open to using those. I am capable of building a website for the book, but that seems a bit ridiculous. I'd rather use the writing site I linked to.

About the book: The novel tells the story of a remote Alaskan village after a large-scale economic collapse. The book follows the people in this town, over the course of a single winter, trying to make a life for themselves in difficult conditions. It is character and plot focused (not premise focused). It has around 60 short chapters.

Any help with strategy as of this point would be greatly appreciated, if in the form of links to potentially helpful AskMe posts or other websites. Even if you think of something that may be helpful to me, but which answers a question I'm not asking, please do share.

Pirate fiction for a scurvy dog

Katemonkey — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:32:30 -0800

I want to read novels about pirates. I don't care about genre, I don't care about quality (much), I just want lots and lots of Age of Sail pirates. And I mean it about genre. Pirate horror, pirate sci-fi, pirate fiction, hell, even a good trashy pirate romance -- I'm there.

If it involves real-life historical pirates, it's even more awesome (with extra bonus points for Anne Bonny and Mary Read).

(I know about the swashbuckling question from 2006, but I want something definitely more pirate-y and less generic swashbuckle-y.)

To Book or not to Book?

Xurando — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:13:58 -0800

How much of book one do I have to explain in book two, if book two is part of a series I'm writing? Last year I started writing an epic novel and got through part one and eighty thousand words. Then I got busy and put the writing down expecting to pick up part two any day, but I haven't.

To get motivated again I signed up for NaNoWriMo. The problem is I can't use any previous writing in NaNoWriMo. I have to start part two like it's book two even though eventually they will be part of the same novel.

How much of book one do I have to explain? It's a complicated plot, but my preference is not to explain it all. Will this approach hurt the writing?

Novels set in the 1970s?

Potomac Avenue — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:33:47 -0800

What are some good novels set in the US of the mid-late seventies? Specifically I'm looking for ones dealing with the wild political election of 1976, the bicentennial, and assassination attempts on President Ford, but I'd be interested in anything written fairly recently set in 1974-1979 on any subject.

(Tags explain why I'm wondering!)

"Why do publishers add 'A Novel' to the titles of novels?": A Question.

CKmtl — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:41:43 -0800

Why do publishers slap on "A Novel" to the titles and/or covers of, well, novels? A few examples:

Anathem by Neal Stephenson (look at the cover)
Duma Key by Stephen King
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga (from today's FPP)

21 out of 56 books (nearly all of those 56 are novels, as far as I can tell) on the current NYT Fiction Best Sellers lists also have "A Novel" in their titles or on their covers. And that's by no means an exhaustive list.

I can understand the point of putting "A [Name-of-Series, Name-of-Continuing-Character, or Name-of-Universe] Novel" on books. Readers can then easily identify a Discworld, James Bond, Dragonlance, or what-have-you book.

Since booksellers now have defined sections, a novel in the Fiction section isn't likely to be mistaken for an autiobiography. Anthologies and collections of short stories are relatively easily identifiable by their tables of contents, credited editors, or descriptions. Poetry is usually off in its own sub-section. Which leaves the novel as the bulk of the Fiction section.

So why the generic "A Novel"?

So... not Hemingway.

zoomorphic — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:38:05 -0800

ProseFilter: Nabokov's Lolita was once hailed as "a love letter to the English language." I'm looking for modern and contemporary authors with similar aspirations. I have a hankering for prose almost to rich for my blood. I specifically love Nabokov's ability to draw tensile connections between object and literary signifier: in Lolita, skies are "heavenlogged," killers are "goatish," plain women are "terrestrial."

I also waded through Ada, and very much enjoyed Atonement, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Midnight's Children, Middlesex, Song of Solomon, and God of Small Things.

What else should I pick up?

Help me choose a book to travel with.

mosessis — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:38:48 -0800

I need a longish, interesting, well-written book (fiction) to read on an upcoming trip. Any suggestions? I'm going on a trip where I'll have plenty of time to read and not much space to pack books. I need to find a good novel-type book that could last me at least a couple of weeks. My trip is for a couple of months in non-English speaking countries, and I want something captivating to fall into as a respite from journeying.

I have read both Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder in this same situation, and those worked perfectly for my purposes. I wish I could just bring one of these again, because they were so perfect - dense, interesting, thought-provoking, lend themselves to rereading passages - but I'd really like to find something new.

My general tastes run towards late 18th Century (Burney Lennox, Austen, etc) and turn of the twentieth century (James, Wharton, Wilde, etc). I generally steer away from serializations that have been turned into novels (Dickens, Forster, etc) and overly romanticized, gothic, heroic, dramatic love type stories (Les Miserables, Goethe, etc). But of course I am completely open to trying new genres and authors that I might not yet know I love.

What book was in your backpack that kept you going through the lonely times? What's the best longish novel you've read that you wish you had had the time to just sit and read? To slightly complicate this, I'm leaving in 36 hours and will have to find this on the shelf at one of my (luckily many) local book stores.