NovelFilter: Hive mind, I have come to the shocking realization that my to-read queue is empty. I really enjoy the surreal side of Murakami (Hard-Boiled Wonderland, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, etc.), and I've recently been remembering the absolutely wonderful creations in Perdido Street Station. Help me find new novels that will send my mind to weird and fantastic places! [more inside]
posted on Aug 2, 2008 - 45 answers

I'm looking for books and graphic novels that are meant to be read multiple times. [more inside]
posted on Jul 25, 2008 - 49 answers

Please recommend me some great books about the home front during WWI or WWII. [more inside]
posted on Jul 21, 2008 - 26 answers

Can you help me set the writing soundtrack to my novels? [more inside]
posted on Jun 26, 2008 - 23 answers

Two of my favorite books for summer are "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin and "Smilla's Sense of Snow" by Peter Hoeg; I'd like suggestions for other (preferably hefty) novels with complex/absorbing story lines and wintry settings or themes to help me stay sane 'til September. Got an ice book to recommend?
posted on Jun 10, 2008 - 46 answers

Did the Generic Food people put out Generic Books? [more inside]
posted on Jun 2, 2008 - 5 answers

My mother likes Jodi Picoult novels. I don't know much about the author but I am looking for similar novels. What novels should I be looking for?
posted on May 9, 2008 - 9 answers

Yet another what-is-this-book/story question (sci-fi, possibly young adult, writen pre-1983) [more inside]
posted on Apr 22, 2008 - 15 answers

A novel about a computer that attempts to create art? Help me identify this sci-fi book. [more inside]
posted on Apr 22, 2008 - 5 answers

Seeking places in Haruki Murakami novels. [more inside]
posted on Mar 11, 2008 - 10 answers

Help balance my male dominated library. Looking for authors that happen to be female and great reads (either literature or very good genre). Specifics inside. [more inside]
posted on Mar 10, 2008 - 60 answers

Help me remember title of really explicit and racy romance novel from the 70s or 80s please! The main character was a young orphaned woman who was in love with her rich caretaker who was a male family member who took her virginity so roughly that she required surgery and was left barren. [more inside]
posted on Feb 16, 2008 - 3 answers

There are about the same number of Mormons in the US as there are Jews. The founding of the Mormon religion happened relatively close to when large Jewish migration to the US began. Both Mormons and Jews had to deal with persecution. There are countless novels about the Jewish-American experience. Where's the great Mormon novel? [more inside]
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - 35 answers

Looking for the name of a sci-fi book. Man is injected with a serum that causes him to shrink forever, eventually discovering there are universes smaller than atoms. [more inside]
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - 9 answers

If you please—I urgently require a few good recommendations of novels that have India as a backdrop. [more inside]
posted on Jan 13, 2008 - 55 answers

Looking for good used bookstores in Denver.... [more inside]
posted on Dec 27, 2007 - 3 answers

I'm looking for popular books, novels, magazines, comic books...in European French (not Canadian French). I'd also like to be able to easily order/purchase them from home (preferably from places like Amazon.com). [more inside]
posted on Dec 4, 2007 - 8 answers

I know about road movies. What about road books? [more inside]
posted on Oct 29, 2007 - 50 answers

I read a very strange book when I was young. The main character's name was Tristram, and it was very trippy. He turned into a tree, and there was weird, bondage type stuff going on with his girlfriend going at his penis with a pair of nail scissors. Do you have any idea what book this was? I'm guessing it would have been published in the late 60's/early 70's. [more inside]
posted on Oct 26, 2007 - 15 answers

Why do/did certain old novels censor names of towns/shires/boroughs? [more inside]
posted on Sep 28, 2007 - 17 answers

What are some intelligent, very clever (funny is OK, but not necessary) recent novels that are readable but not trashy? Think along the lines of Zadie Smith's White Teeth and Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Avoiding verbosity (Rushdie) and anachronism (The Great Gatsby, etc.), what's left? [more inside]
posted on Sep 16, 2007 - 52 answers

Classic Novel filter : What would be considered classics in 1980s, 1990s, 2000s? Must reads? [more inside]
posted on Sep 14, 2007 - 37 answers

I've just read a classic SF novel and I'm looking for some other titles in a similar vein. [more inside]
posted on Aug 30, 2007 - 52 answers

Please recommend novels whose heroines are similar to the protagonist of Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym? [more inside]
posted on Aug 23, 2007 - 16 answers

Best-selling childrens' novels of the last 20 years (age 8+)? [more inside]
posted on Aug 17, 2007 - 22 answers

What is the correct way of writing paragraphs in a novel? [more inside]
posted on Aug 14, 2007 - 28 answers

What novels are on the middle school syllabus these days? or What novels should be on the middle school syllabus? [more inside]
posted on May 23, 2007 - 24 answers

BookFilter: I've recently gotten done with Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger (link here). I'm looking for more books like it. [more inside]
posted on Apr 23, 2007 - 19 answers

BookFilter: I’m pregnant and would love recommendations for fictional books including or centering on pregnant characters. [more inside]
posted on Apr 20, 2007 - 24 answers

I loved fairy tales as a child, and now that I am (nominally) a grownup, I love the "retellings" of fairytales — the fleshed-out versions which, for example, feature actual character development instead of lines like "she was as beautiful as she was good". I love Robin McKinley's retellings of "Donkeyskin", "Sleeping Beauty" and "Beauty and the Beast" (which she did twice for good measure), and Gregory Maguire's surprisingly political Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. What other good grown-up fairytales are out there?
posted on Apr 11, 2007 - 60 answers

Help me think of great novels that were written when their authors were unusually young. [more inside]
posted on Apr 9, 2007 - 39 answers

I'm doing research (for a writing project) into Film Noirs and Mystery Pulps, and I'm looking for good selections of a certain plot type: the "missing person" scenario. [more inside]
posted on Mar 11, 2007 - 20 answers

How many type written pages make up a novel? [more inside]
posted on Feb 9, 2007 - 12 answers

What are some great novels and movies about breakups and divorce? [more inside]
posted on Dec 23, 2006 - 61 answers

What were some of the most influential novels of each decade of the 20th century? [more inside]
posted on Dec 21, 2006 - 59 answers

I like to learn things, but textbooks are boring! I find comic books gripping in ways that normal books aren't. Can you all offer examples of educational, information-rich comic books (or, if you prefer, "graphic novels")? [more inside]
posted on Dec 18, 2006 - 29 answers

Recommendations for historical fiction about Paris? I'll be there for a couple of weeks, and have found that historical novels can really help me sink my teeth into a place. I have no particular era in mind, so the period is less important than the setting and the writing.
posted on Dec 15, 2006 - 21 answers

Looking for inspiration in two kinds of books. Perhaps you've got some recommendations? 1) Novels with very short "chapters" or fragments or pieces, that combine to make a whole; 2) Books boldly written, whether that be a writer being bold with timelines, punctuation, language, etc. (examples of both types of books inside). [more inside]
posted on Dec 6, 2006 - 54 answers

I'm looking for the name of a book I read in the early '70s about a genius who comes up with all kinds of ideas for solving everyday problems. [more inside]
posted on Nov 8, 2006 - 1 answers

What is the name of this novel/short story? A father is speaking to his daughter (Melanie maybe?) on the phone, and she tells him either that she's pregnant or marrying a much older man, who I think was her professor. I distinctly remember the professor being older than the father by quite a bit; I think the professor gets on the phone and calls the father "sir." The father is horrified, and to make matters worse, he and his wife are getting a divorce, which he doesn't want to tell his daughter about.
posted on Oct 30, 2006 - 5 answers

Where can I find sales figures for novels (new and/or classic)? I am aware of Bookscan and Publisher's Lunch, but those are very expensive.
posted on Oct 26, 2006 - 9 answers

Please help me select a book as a present for my nephew. He's 19, and when I gave him a Chapters gift card for his high school graduation last spring, he used it to buy a complete set of Tom Clancy novels. Political espionage/intrigue/adventure has to be the genre I know the least about. If my nephew likes Tom Clancy's and Frederick Forsythe's works, what other books in the same genre would he enjoy?
posted on Sep 17, 2006 - 25 answers

Need suggestions for good reads to bring along on a two week vacation to (mostly) rural Germany for an American Lit and Creative Writing teacher. [more inside]
posted on Jul 10, 2006 - 12 answers

Has anyone done an epistolary comic book? It's not obvious to me how such a project could work and I'm interested in seeing what, if anything, artists have done with the form. I'm also interested in recommendations for good epistolary novels. I've already looked at the wikipedia page on epistolary novels and I plan to read some of the novels mentioned there.
posted on Jun 15, 2006 - 7 answers

Bookworm MeFites: I'm looking for novels, short stories, and plays by white authors where their non-white characters speak in a dialect. For instance, the slave Jim in Twain's Huckleberry Finn. [more inside]
posted on May 25, 2006 - 45 answers

What is the most profane novel ever written? I'm talking about the absolute dirtiest work of fiction. And by "dirty" I don't really mean sexual content, like a de Sade book. I'm more interested in sheer volume of swears. Thanks!
posted on May 9, 2006 - 36 answers

What are some good cartoons, graphic novels, essays, fiction that are about regular life, or a regular guy? [more inside]
posted on Apr 20, 2006 - 37 answers

Later today I'm teaching a class on Ian McEwan's Atonement. I'd like to juxtapose the extremely complex kind of atonement depicted in this novel with other, structurally simpler stories of atonement. Any ideas? [more inside]
posted on Apr 6, 2006 - 7 answers

I'm looking for the longest sentence in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. [more inside]
posted on Mar 24, 2006 - 16 answers

What are some good Swedish novels? [more inside]
posted on Mar 20, 2006 - 17 answers