fan of Kafka on the Shore

Anyone seen the IFC film Brief Interviews With Hideous Men?

only briefly, it was pretty bad iirc

definitely going to be checking out A Fan's Notes

Update: 50% through vol. 3 of Caro's LBJ, and he's now the most powerful Senate Majority Leader in history - and also the youngest ever named to that post. Can't recommend the series more highly. Combination of outstanding writing, superb research, and unbelievable source material. I'm over 2k pages deep and can't wait to pick it up again.

Finished Crime and Punishment. A bit slow moving in parts, but an outstanding work. In my top 5 for sure. Don't know what I'll read next.

Why The Brothers Karamazov, of course.

Master and the Margarita, of course.

I've been advocating for Wittgenstein's Mistress for a long time here. Markson's The Last Novel is more of the same but has a different "plot."

If you like both of those, then I'd try Gilbert Sorrentino's Steelwork. I also liked Edwin Mullhouse quite a bit. If you do take another suggestion and read Pale Fire and enjoy it, then next go to Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot.

You're clearly one of our literary readers. In terms of your recent request for recommendations, have you read Faulkner? (The Sound and the Fury is obviously the great work, but there are many ways in to Faulkner.)

And Joyce's Dubliners? Worth rereading many times, especially "The Dead"--whether you go on to read other Joyce or not ...

Just finished the count of Monte cristo. Fantastic novel, definitely one of the best I have read (I've read hardly any novels, especially classics). Now I'm looking for some similar recommendations. My only complaint would be that it dragged slightly in spots but any comparable stuff would be great. Is three muskateers the natural follow up?

Also open to other random classic recommendations that are not in the same genre

Oh yes. Joyce and Faulkner, along with Melville are probably my favorite authors right now. After I read TSAF (it was actually the second time, but I'm ~99% sure I did not really read it in high school) I felt like a new world had been opened up to me in terms of what literature could really do.

Joyce is just on another planet. If someone has liked Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, then they might want to give Ulysses a go. It is true the novel requires more concentration then any other book I've read, but the experience is IMMENSE and rewarding. I think the book's reputation for difficulty has unfortunately scared many completely qualified people away from reading it. It is also much, much funnier than people may realize. It is like reading ten at once novels.



So, great recommendations, but yes they've been covered. Honestly, there are still dozens of other older books that I want to read, but now that I am making the embarrassing transition from reader to aspirant writer, I would like to read some contemporary stuff as well.

Thanks for the reccomendations from the other poster as well. I used to think I hated so called post-modernism, but apparently I am a fan of many books that fit the mould. To be honest, I have no idea what the hell it even means anymore. I will say I'm not a fan of Pynchon. Can anyone tell me why The crying of Lot 49 is worth rereading? Many smarter than me like it; I am perplexed.

Three Muskateers was definitely worth the read !

On another topic, Koenigsmark is also a great book I just finished.

Starting reading Wool-Omnibus Edition due to glowing reviews on amazon. Interesting enough idea so far, will report back when I have a better idea.

I'm astonished to think that anyone would ask high school students to read The Sound and the Fury--though perhaps a good teacher could get students through it if he or she could overcome their initial resistance. (I first tried reading it at 19 and was perplexed by the Benji section.) As for the resistance to Joyce's Ulysses, I agree that its reputation is unnecessarily inhibiting: I think all those on this list who have read Infinite Jest and found it rewarding would find Ulysses easy to respond to.

Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 was important when it was published because it exemplified an important new strain in fiction--one preoccupied with "reading" and "interpreting" and with the ideas of secrecy and paranoia. And it was short enough that people could get through it easily and say they'd read some Pynchon. The really important Pynchon work remains Gravity's Rainbow, which--though I haven't gone back to it in a long time--remains worth reading, I would think. I haven't tried his later "big" books but hope to give at least one of them a shot in the not-too-distant future.

In general, recommending (at least somewhat more) contemporary works is tricky because the canon is less established and the field therefore so large. My personal starting places might be with Rohinton Mistry's novels (A Fine Balance and Such a Long Journey)--which are great but may not be what you want since they are so much in the tradition of 19th century realism--and Michael Ondaatje's fiction, beginning with In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient. Among the Americans, I suggest coming to DeLillo at an early point, if you haven't already; as well as Toni Morrison (my own favourite is Song of Solomon, though many would recommend Beloved); Cormac McCarthy; and Richard Ford.

The contemporary books I've read in the past year that I thought were standouts include Cloud Atlas (recommended several times now by earlier posters; it would, I guess, be a good example of highly readable postmodernism), The Art of Fielding (though this title has produced several dissenters on this list), and The Stranger’s Child. I also found Swamplandia very satisfying but I'm not sure if it's one for the ages ...