The years continue to tick off in my personal march towards senility and physical decrepitude, and another milestone isn’t far away. And so, when the usual requests of “what do you want for your birthday?” came from family and friends, the well of inspiration was even drier than usual. Some new books would be nice, but which of the massive selection of books currently in print are worth my time?
So, in the grand tradition of blog questions, what books should I put on the birthday wishlist? Fiction, non-fiction, contemporary or classic, I’m open to suggestions. But I’d like something I might actually read in its entirety, so Freudian readings of Dostoyevsky, any novel that involves twenty-page descriptions of mist, or the collected works of Gene Ray are out. Consciousness expansion and challenging ideas are in, but, please, choose something accessible if it’s an area you think I might not be familiar with or entirely sympathetic to – think The Communist Manifesto rather than Das Kapital, OK?
Beyond that, be as eclectic and downright eccentric in your suggestions as you like. Histories of obscure Asian wars? Biographies of eccentric inventors? Theoretical tomes on domestic violence? Diamond-hard science fiction? Suggest away!
Robert, if you haven’t already read it, I’d recommend “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan. I read it a year or so ago and found it a cracking read. (On the other hand, my book club has just rated it “the most polarising book the club has read so far” although I’m not really sure why.)
The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. A Russian who could keep a conversation between characters under twelve pages and a description of a chair under a chapter.
A couple of Nerd-like suggestions (which I’ve found to be excellent reading):
Blind Man’s Bluff – Concentrates on american submarine espionage (Sontag and Drew), covers technical details without being overdone.
Dark Shadows Falling – Another Joe Simpson mountaineering book.
Cryptonomicon – Neil Stephenson. Detailed, very nerdy but amusing read.
Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb – Written by Richard Rhodes (who has a similar work on the Atomic bomb), good in that it gives a slightly scary rundown of the cold war nuke politics/development.
Good Omens – Pratchett and Gaiman, a classic by two gents who I’d love to see do more work together, provided Terry gets better
At any rate that should keep you busy for a while
Always a hard question to answer when you don’t know what the person has already read.
History:
Look, anything by Anthony Beevor really, but don’t read Berlin unless you want to feel really, really depressed.
I’ve heard rumours of history before the 20th century but I tend to ignore those as the delusions of madmen. Except the bits about the Mongols. The Devil’s Horsemen by James Chambers is a good one for that.
Politics:
I try not to. Everything tends to amount to self aggrandizement or the usual ‘everyone should act the way I want them to!’ type entries.
Actually, does Catch 22 count? If so, that.
Sci-Fi:
Much better territory. Hard only?
Fallen Dragon by Peter F Hamilton
Space by Stephen Baxter
Evolution by Stephen Baxter
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson doens’t quite fit but is worth the read regardless.
Goedel, Escher, Bach is a great little stocking filler, Robert. (Unless, of course, you’ve already read it.) More seriously, Everything and More by David Foster Wallace is a rather quirky biography of Georg Cantor. (Well, I enjoyed it.)
OK, here’s my offering.
The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, by Orlando Figes (which I’m currently reading and enjoying despite the grim content).
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore.
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (better than Collapse).
The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong.
Stephen Baxter’s Coalescent/Exultant/Transcendent/Resplendent sci-fi series.
Time by the same author.
P.S. And what brisbanedavey said about the other Baxter titles and Anthony Beevor.
Flann O’Brien is amusing. Irish.
I particularly enjoyed (and have quoted with glee on this blog) John Gray’s Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia.
The other book by Michael Pollan (comment 1) looks good too.
‘The Tall Man’ by Chloe Hooper about the death in custody on Palm Island is very readable and important.
Anything by WG Sebald.
Happy birthday!
the recent “Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America” by Hugh Wilford is well worth the effort
John Lanchester, “A Debt to Pleasure”
Watchmen by Alan More and Dave Gibbon (and John Higgins who I had the *very* good fortune to meet yesterday)
From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
d
I recommend Fracturing Resemblances: Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West, by Simon Harrison.
From the blurb: “Western societies draw crucially on concepts of the ‘individual’ in constructing their images of the ethnic group and nation and define these in terms of difference. This study explores the implications of these constructs for Western understanding of social order and ethnic conflicts. Comparing them with the forms of cultural identity characteristic of Melanesia as they have developed since pre-colonial times, the author arrives at a surprising conclusion: he argues that these kinds of identities are more properly and adequately viewed as forms of disguised or denied resemblance, and that it is these covert commonalities that give rise to, and prolong, social divisions and conflicts between groups.”
Only 190 odd pages, anthropology but written for a more general audience, some stimulating ideas.
Read Guns, Germs and Steel if you are looking for a way to rationalize the history of European colonialism and continuing Western global hegemony; it was all just an accident of geography, nobody is responsible for anything that happened. It makes Americans (and Europeans, and Australians etc) feel better to know that our wealth now had nothing to do with centuries of appropriation, its all just in the natural order of things that we’re so lucky. Hence the popularity of this book. This is a truly shit book.
Gorky Park was the best book I’ve read in the last 18 months – which is high praise from me.
Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm
… and… stuff.
One quick point: I’ve read (and would recommend to others) plenty of Neal Stephenson, and a bit of Stephen Baxter.
Happy Birthday!
Anything by Phillip Ker, Second Angel – still rocks me to the core and I don’t understand half of it – not that keen on theology
I’ve just bought and read ‘The Brain That Changes Itself’, by Norman Doidge. http://www.scribepublications.com.au/book/thebrainthatchangesitself
Its about neuroplasticity – the ability of the brain to grow and change when its damaged – like how blind people often have particuarly acute hearing. It also talks about things like why people with amputations might experience phantom limbs, and how people might recover from strokes.
I’ve never read anything about neuroscience, but I was just facinated. I bought it on a whim on Friday night, and had finished it by Sunday afternoon!
Syrup by Max Barry. I set the first chapter as the first week’s reading in a course I co-taught last year on consumer culture. It is very very funny and a biting critique of the marketing industry. Barry has certainly become more polished as a writer since Syrup, but it is still my favourite book of his. The ending is fantastic.
Have you read the Gormenghast trilogy? If not, I’d recommend it highly. It’s very different to the sword-and-sorcery kind of fantasy writing. There is no magic at all,just a complete invented world. Riveting.
Nam Le’s The Boat: I bought this wondering if it would be worthy-but-dull. Could not have been more wrong. A great read.
Guns, Germs and Steel is OK but the writing is like watching paint dry – why not buy some of Stephen Jay Gould’s back catalogue? (Well, sadly, now it’s all back catalogue). Iconic science writing, but well written and readable.
Along with Patrick G I’d recommend Gorky Park and all the Arkady Renko novels of Martin Cruz Smith which are interesting because they follow a detective thru the last days of the Soviet Union to the dawn of gangster capitalism and then Putkin’s neo-Stalinism. Well researched, well written and Renko’s one of the best fictional detectives I’ve come across.
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I’d also recommend:
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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (or anything else by same). This is a strange take on human power. Not really about politics but about the force that lies behind it. Murakami’s important too. It’s nice to read something contemporary that’s also gonna go down in literary history.
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Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. First novel. Don’t let that or the apparent pretentiousness of the title fool you. This is a very strange and beautifully written story which is partially allegory, partially mystery, partially coming of age. The narrator is a teenage girl who is also a genius bred to ‘enter world history’. To explin how and why would spoil the ending which is a twister.
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A Hero of Our Time. Mikael Lermontov. 19th century Romantic. Only novel by the famous poet. For my money worth all the other Rooskies put together. And short too. Lermontov died in a duel as all good male Russian writers should.
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Great Jones Street Don Delilo. Viz a rock star (based on Bob Dylan) who leaves the stage and fame behind to enter self-imposed exile in a crummy New York tenament. Lives beneath a hack writer who keeps saying “Fame? It won’t happen. But if it does, but it won’t, but if it does, but it won’t”.
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And The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Originally entitled Men Who Hate Women this is a thriller (part on of a trilogy) that’s also a political discussion. The central characters are an investigative journalist who’s a classical social democrat and a security expert (the title character) who’s pretty much a libertarian. Easy to read. A little simplistic as with most thrillers but quite worthy especially viz the aformentioned ideologies and their ideas of justice.
Well, Robert ….
Colonial Australian History :A few must reads: Grace Kaarskens, The Colony. A History of Early Sydney.; and Peter Chochrane, Colonial Ambition. Foundations of Australian Democracy; Vol. 2 of Alan Atkinson’s Europeans in Australia; Democracy. (Vol. 1 is good, but volume 2 is sheer genius.)
American History: John Ferling’s A Leap in the Dark. The Struggle to create the American Republic, and Almost AQ Miracle. The American Victory in the War of Independence, about the political and military history of early US, respectively.
Also, Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution. The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the struggle to create America.
18th Century England: Linda Colley’s Captives; and The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh;Roy Porter’s Enlightenment. Britain and the Creation of the Modern World. (A bit hard going but worth it.); John brewer’s The Pleasures of the Imagination. English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, (An absolute gem, seems to be known mostly to specialists, but it deserves a much wider audience.)
Biography: Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men. The Friends who Made the Future; John Sugden, Nelson. A Dream of Glory; Wendy Moore, The Knife Man. The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery;
Classics: War and Peace, War and Peace, War and Peace.
I could go on for ages but I won’t.
If you want to read a really weirdly amphibious book – half Austenesque courtship novel, morphing into book about the birth of modern industrial relations in c19 England, read *North and South* by Elizabeth Gaskell. Perhaps not that great of a birthday present though because the perfectly adequate Wordsworth edition is only about five dollars.
Two unputdownable, undemanding to read, but richly rewarding to think over afterwards graphic novel / memoirs: *Persepolis*, by Marjane Satrapi – growing up in the Islamic Revolution – get the omnibus edition because vol 2 is better in my opinion than vol 1: and *Fun Home*, by Alison Bechdel, about growing up in America in the 1970s (the title comes from the family business, which was a small town funeral home, and the memoir is suitable Addams-family-ish but with a strong dose of reality.)
Under no circumstances read A.S. Byatt’s new novel, which is 659 pages of lectures on boring c19 trivia (quite a lot of which Byatt gets wrong), gush about ceramic pots and boringly incestuous potters, and elves & hobgoblins etc.
Franz Kafka “The Trial”
Any short story collection by Franz Kafka that contains “The Great Wall Of China” an absolutely superb quasi-historical account of the construction of The Geat Wall narrated by a peasant that functions as an accidental dissertation on how States control their populations. Brilliant.
Poetry? Anything by Gwendolyn MacEwen.
“Beware! I know a language so beautiful and sharp my mouth bleeds when I speak it”
…
“It was morning and the garden was filled with jewels and meteorites”
Oh and if you do graphic novels, or if you only do one: The Sandman by Neil Gaiman.
If you havent already read too much climate change stuff then Scott Barrett Environment and Statecraft and J. E. Aldy and R. N. Stavins Architectures for Agreement are both good.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman: Prose like silk, excellent historical footnotes, highly creative use of narrator.
There’s a book I’m seeing in the shops about custom bikes, too.
How about some biology?
“Infinite Tropics: An Alfred Russell Wallace Anthology”
The workshop manual to your motorcycle. What, no motorcycle? Get a motorcycle, then buy the workshop manual.
Finally, I think I with everyone else here awaits the firm miaowing at the screen door that will be commenter Nabakov wanting to come in from the cold outside, in for a soft seat by the heater, two fingers of Macallan and a scratch between the ears, and will probably go straight to the library to borrow whatever he’s reading.
Paul B reminded me about the Aussie history thing – John Birminghams history of Sydney “Leviathan” is a good read.
Reconstruction Designs of Lost Chinese Machines….Yan,Hong Sen Series History of Mechanism and Machines Vol 3 On line Version available
Graphic Novels :
Watchmen – Alan Moore / Dave Gibbons
Preludes and Nocturnes (Sandman Vol.1 ) : Neil Gaiman / Various
The First Hundred Days (Ex Machina Vol. 1) : Brian Vaughan / Tony Harris
Fiction
Laws of Our Fathers – Scott Turow (by the writer of Presumed Innocent, a legal thriller from the point of view of the judge, also with flashbacks to the 60s in all its ‘fun’ and chaos’)
The Collector – John Fowles (one of the most chilling novels ever written, and the template for Silence of the Lambs and all similiar fiction)
Non-fiction
The Justice Game – Geoffrey Robertson (sort-of memoir, where he discusses his most interesting cases and clients, one per chapter)
Recollections of a Bleeding Heart – Don Watson – memoir of his time working for Paul Keating
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote (still has the power it always had)
David Christian, Maps of Time: an introduction to big history
Robert! There are too many books and too little time! You can’t bring the cyclist’s m.o to reading – making lists and goals like you do for daily rides, itineraries and destinations to reach. Personally when it came to books in retirement I had to get out of my running shoes and mileage mania and become a rambler instead.
I no longer ask for books for birthdays. Instead I insist on lunch if family and friends are at hand, preferably near water or trees. Inevitablty we talk about books they’ve read and that way many of my choices are enhanced by sharing their recent pleasure, and usually their copy too! It’s reciprocal, of course.
Sounds as if you buy your books so your house is probably already crammed with them. If you’re like me many have shared your home for over fifty years. It’s amazing how some of them fall to hand, asking to be read again and like old friends remind you of things past and suggest others by the same writer you can buy. Or there’ll be many which were gifts for which there wasn’t the time or the inclination all those years ago. Now there is time.
Browsing in bookshops, remaindered stacks and second hand stalls, a pleasure in itself, provides armfuls of stuff I can’t wait to read. And again there’s a serendipity about what asks to be bought. I seem to read a lot biography these days. As well there are hundreds of wonderful recorded memoirs to listen to in bed or in the car. I have coffee every day with the Book Show’s First Person. They don’t have to be Margaret Attwood or Patrick White to send me out to buy a printed verion.
Sorry, can’t recommend anything in particular. Trust I haven’t wasted your reading time!
Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. Each paragraph feels like perfection.
Read George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I say this because it’s a supremely nourishing novel, despite being tougher than a urine-soaked ox hide; and incidentally I’m just under half-way though in 18 months’ reading.
Read Adam Roberts if you want some solid high-concept SF (and even zanier stuff than that). My favourites are Salt (debut) and Stone (no. 3). Also try his tribute to Ezra Pound, The Land of the Headless. He tends to revel in his own education sometimes, and it can jar.
Pamela Freeman has a great literary fantasy trilogy, the Castings, commencing with Blood Ties and the newish Deep Water.
Non-fic notables: The Wisdom of Bones: In Search of Human Origins (Alan Walker, Pat Shipman) and The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal (David McCullough).
John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces. As near as it gets to a note perfect portrait of white man’s New Orleans, and one of literature’s great characters to boot in Ignatius J Reilly. Though the copyright on his character seems to be loaned by the Liberal Party every few years!
Ruth Park – small catalogue, but one of the warmest, sharpest observers of character I’ve read. “Harp in the South” is the famous one, but her NZ memoir, “Kind Hearts and Gentle People” is wickedly good fun.
Agree with Craig Mc on Great Gatsby. Alongside James Joyce’s “Dubliners”, it’s as great a symphony of writing that I know. Both get revisited regularly.
And if you want crime with long, long shadows across the soul, there’s the collected works of Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy to have a look into – The Long Goodbye and The Black Dahlia respectively if you’ve only time for one each. Actually, while we’re in this genre, Patricia Highsmith is a 24 carat gem – she throws the lure out deep, and winds you in quietly.
And happy birthday from me too!
“Think of
All the junk
I could
Lay my hands on,
Purify
My heart.”
– Kristin Hersh
Happy b’day, monsieur R.M. Your wish is a noble one. That’s a reward in itself, tho’ it’s not such good manners of me to point it out. Ummm… pardon.
(scurries under a pile of old bricks.)
Read anything at all by Alan Moorehead, a most talented wordsmith. The White Nile and The Blue Nile are good places to start.
Then try two great works by Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, both of which explore the theme that people see in others what they want or need to see, a proposition which has much explanatory power for contemporary Australian politics.
Ruth Park in her Autobiography, Vol 2. about her husband, D’Arcy Niland.
Adrien #21
Red Square – Martin Cruz Smith
For sheer wallowing reading pleasure, the entire Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. I feel jealous of anyone who hasn’t read them, because they still have that complete, immersive, first read ahead of them.
I also have a more than fond spot for A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell. Something else that’s worth it just for the joy of reading.
Australiana: The first two of the planned Frank Moorhouse trilogy – Grand Days and Dark Palace – and his earlier The Americans Baby. David Ireland’s The Unknown Industrial Prisoner. The Tree of Man by Patrick White. Anything by Peter Temple (superior Australian crime writer). Ice by Louis Nowra. Overseas: Anything by George Orwell, but a quirky choice is Burmese Days. Anything by Scott Fitzgerald, particularly The Great Gatsby, but also Tender is the Night. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and No Country for Old Men. Great Expectations and Bleak House by Dickens. Vanity Fair by Thackeray. Everything by Jane Austen. That should keep you going for a while!
Second the recommendation for Pollan, although the last paragraph is pretty self-indulgent.
I disagree that Diamond lets anyone off the hook in Guns, Germs and Steel – he’s not precluding other causes of colonialism, he’s simply using a biogeographical lens to take a look at it. My main complaint is I think his writing style is clunky, dry and he could probably end his books a chapter sooner – a bit repetitive.
In Fiction two I’ve really enjoyed recently, and am re-reading both are The Cloud Atas by DAvid Mithcel- wonderful inventive and decidedly adult sci-fi; and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimon – one of those ‘young adult’ fantasies that’s actually just as good for adults, a very intelligent, funny, and erudite read – as Tchaikovsky is to Beethoven sort of (popular for a reason).
Lord of the Rings is always worth revisiting. My copy is nearly 50 years old, and falling apart. Yes, I know most of the writing is pedestrian and the characters are mostly cardboard cutouts, but it’s still a guilty pleasure.
I suggest a revisit to Diana Preston’s The boxer rebellion: the dramatic story of China’s war on foreigners that shook the world in the summer of 1900 for understanding the recent conflicts between Australia and China.
All of:
Bruce Chatwin
Carson McCullers
RichardFordTobiasWolffRaymondCarver
Henry Handel Richardson
Should keep you busy for a little while.
Colm Toibin, Hanif Kureishi, David Malouf, Penelope Fitzgerald (just starting on her, where has she been all our lives?), Julia Leigh.
Now I’m going to shut up or I’ll start sounding like Bruce McAvaney. Have a great birthday with all your new books though.
I second the shout-out to Cruz-Smith’s best creation – I’ve read all of them. “Wolves Eat Dogs” was fascinating.
I see there’s a new one: “Stalin’s Ghost”. I must track that one down.
“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” is really good if you’d like a break from all the fine wordsmiths, brilliant writers and sublime prose.
“The Book of Snobs” by Thackeray. Collections of short pieces by Karl Kraus. Second JohnL: anything by Orwell.
and on a lighter note….the ascent of Rum Doodle – can’t recall the author – and Three men in a boat by Jerome K Jerome. Sometimes it’s good to laugh too.
In Cold Blood by Capote – once you’re done laughing with the other two.
Fact: anything and everything by Steven Pinker aka “Pinker the Thinker”. Start with “Words and Rules”, a true tour de force through grammar and language acquisition–plus the only dirty joke about the pluperfect subjunctive in existence.
Fiction: the Aubrey-Maturin series, almost impossible to tell that it wasn’t written in 1815.You can either revel in, or skim, the technical shippy stuff, but the interplay of humanity, science, derring-do and narrative mastery is irresistible
“Time in New England” – historical texts selected by Nancy Newhall accompanied by Paul Strand’s photography. From the accounts of the pilgrims to the letters of Sacco & Vanzetti, an engrossing meditation on the violent and metaphysical roots of the USA.
Try this trick.
Find a librarian, they hang out in libraries.
Talk to one of them, all that I know are wonderfully helpful people.
Follow her [cos its probably a her] around as she tries to satisfy your wants.
Take half a dozen or so books, eclectically chosen, home and read.
And then follow up on any that interest you.
By author or topic or genre.
Don’t worry about the dead ends just follow the most interesting looking path[s].
Might be an interesting journey and you never know where you will end up.
Shelby Foote’s American Civil War Trilogy.
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood. She still keeps insisting that she doesn’t write SF; this book gives that notion the lie. And the prose sparkles.
“What should I read?”
Catullus. Early and often.
Actually the answer I generally urge to this question is: poetry. Read as much real poetry as you can, as often as you can. Tastes differ, but for starters personally I recommend “Don Juan” by Lord Byron, and the Collected Poems of James Schuyler. Read as much Schuyler as you can, whenever you can.
Also “Maggie Cassidy” by Jack Kerouac, which isn’t poetry but might as well be. Oh, and “The Dharma Bums” (yeah yeah, worst title in the world, I know) also by Kerouac: forget “On the Road” and mainline some of the real china white. After that you’ll almost be ready for Gary Snyder his bad self.
Oh, and Burton Watson’s superb translations of Su Tung-p’o. God bless Burton Watson. And Su Tung-p’o.
And listen to lots of Mozart. People who listen to Mozart tend to think more clearly, and they’re nearly always better in bed.
I second ‘Cloud Atlas’ by David Mitchell, ‘Onyx and Crake’ and of course the wonderful ‘The Great Gatsby’.
Also ‘American Rust’ by Philipp Meyer and ‘The Steep Approach To Garbadale’ by Iain Banks are great reads.
If non-fiction is what you’re after and you love books, ‘The World of the Book’ is a lavishly illustrated history of publishing based partly on the collection in the State Library of Victoria.
Stalin’s Ghost isn’t bad, CraigMc, and it’s certainly worth your hard-earned at your local second-hand bookshop. However…
[spoiler]
IMO Renko’s character was always a foil to Irina, who’s a dominating presence in all three of the first novels, despite being entirely absent in the second. I get the definite sense that Cruz-Smith’s editor is pressuring him for ever more post-Soviet misery-lit, every time more depressing, more cynical, more violent, more bleak. If you like that kind of thing—and I think you share my tastes in this regard—it’s great, but the post-Yeltsin novels still lack much of the familiar cleverness of the first three.
Now if you want crime novels set in a genuinely depressing post-Communist wasteland, try out Shane Maloney’s Murray Whelan novels, set in the Victorian ALP.
Daniel Woodrell’s country noir series set in the Missouri Ozarks.
Robert, if you have any interest in gritty private investigators from Manhattan who are vampires then Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt series is a great read. Start with Already Dead.
Huston’s Hank Thompson Trilogy (Caught Stealing,Six bad Things and A Dangerous Man)is a darkly, funny read. No vampires, just the story of a guy who tries to help someone out, pays for that mistake and then keeps paying for trying to set things right.
Happy Birthday Robert.
Some classics – some of which other LPers have noted.
Australian: Henry Handel Richardson’s Australia Felix (all 3 vols.); and Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children. Both books really kick you on the guts.
Japanese: The Tale of Genji.
Russian: Anything by Dostoevsky; anything by Tolstoy; Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago.
French: Balzac’s Lost Illusions (my favourite Balzac.); Zola’s Germinal; and his war novel of the Franco Prussian War, Le Debacle. Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris; Les Miserables – and a lesser known little gem of his, Toilers of the Sea. Sartre’s Iron in the Soul Trilogy – his play, Lucifer and the Lord.
Spain: Francesca and Jacinta – off hand I can’t think of the name of the author – a Penguin Classic – and a mind-blowing masterpiece; anything by Lorca.
Dickens – Dombey And Son, Little Dorrit, Barnaby Rudge; Almost any novel by Thomas Hardy; Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories (short stories and novels);Ann Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (a bit of a neglected masterpiece; Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights; skip Charlotte Bronte – she’ll bore you to tears.
Finally, some Americans; Ernest Hemingway – A Farewell to Arms; and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Second the recommendations made for Fitzgerald by other Lp-ers.
Oh, thayt’ll do. This is probably miles too long, anyway.
The book which I have read recently is The Balkans : nationalism, war, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999 by Glenny, Misha. This amazing history provided a comprehension and understanding of an incredibly complex part of the world. Well written it flows well and leaves you with an understanding of historical and current tensions. For the first time I began to understand the differences between Greek and Slav Macedonians, previously an incomprehensible puzzel.
Tom Sharpe’s Wilt and the Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser.
Robert Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Peter Temple’s Jack Irish novels
T.E. Carhart’s The Piano Shop on the Left Bank.
Ronald Wright’s Time Among the Maya, Cut Stones and Crossroads
From our Canadian cousins’ pantheon -
Timothy Findley’s The Wars & Famous Last Words.
Margaret Laurence’s novels especially The Diviners
Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe stories
Joy Kogawa Obasan
Thomas King Medicine River
It’s an eclectic mix
I’ve just finished Bill Bryson’s “A short history of nearly everything”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything
It was an absolute delight, I went and purchased another 3 copies for presents.
My mum, not a scientist, loved it. My missus, who is a earth scientist, loved it also. (I ended up getting the kids version for my goddaughter who I’m so happy to say is science mad as well, 10years old, hope she doesn’t lose it).
Some great yarns in there.
If you’re going to read Henry Handel Richardson, don’t read the seriose books. Stary with The Getting of Wisdom, and marvel at how little Melbourne society has changed in a century.
Naomi Wolff – The Beauty Myth – a seminal feminist work. Her chapters on teh Cosmetics Industry are eye-opening
Non-fiction: Suetonius – The Twelve Ceasers – Reads like an insiders account to the character and decisions and personal lifestyle of the Roman Caesers. Tremendous read to give one an idea about life in ancient Rome.
I’d second the Bill Bryson recommendation.
Great Feuds in Mathematics, Hal Hellman
Milan Kundera, Unbearable lightness of being
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil – easy to read just a few aphorisms at a time.
Happy Birthday Robert.
I am not going to try and cherry pick anything from above, here are some more suggestions.
History:
Gilgamesh – love, loss, stomping on the neighbors, trying to live forever and a bunch of stories that eventually made it into the Abrahamic canon. Stephen Mitchell produced a new translation a few years ago. it is fairy short too.
Science:
Primo Levi – The Periodic Table.
Graphic Novels
Maus – Art Spiegalman
SF
Vonnegut – Cats Cradle and slaughterhouse 5.
happy winnowing
“Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” by Ayn Rand.
A great, short book on the true nature of government, causes of war, mans rights and a host of other things – including of course Capitalism itself – that may just surprise you with your agreement!
Figured you might have read some of my list Robert. In that case I would add
Halting State by Charles Stross
Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross
Ilium/ Olympos by Dan Simmons
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf
Battlelines, Tony Abbott
hehe
I’ve finally got around to reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. I shouldn’t have left it so long!
How did Robert Dessaix not get mentioned yet? My favourite author, mainly for his ability to write so engagingly about normal life- you know the one that we all live but often discount as we look for something more entertaining (one of the reasons we read books?)
Really nice to see Timothy Findley get a nod – but last time I looked he was mainly out of print.
You might like this, by the Crooked Timber blogger and philosopher John Holbo.
And as you come from a country town, you *must* read David Foster’s Dog Rock and its sequel, The Pale Blue Crocheted Coat Hanger Cover. I command it. But they’re very hard to find.
Orhan Pamuk, Robert Dessaix (as noted above), Primo Levi “If this is a Man”, the War Poets 1914-1918 Wilfred Owen, Seigfrid Sassoon. I read a lot of essays nowadays, a form that suits not only the time available but when well written will occupy my thoughts endlessly. Clive James for some lightness as well as hidden depths.
I’m also thankful for many of the suggestions here, but saddened a little as well. So much to read, so little time.
Jill S. – Cheers. He really is very good isn;t he, poetry as well as architecture.
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And Robert, my manners sorry, Happy Birthday old bean.
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Also The Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea Trilogies, and many others.
Still writing more than 30 years after those classics, but haven’t read her recent work.
Just found out she was here in 1975 as the guest of honour at the World Sci-Fi Convention, well according to wikipedia, so it must be true eh.
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“Le Guin has received five Hugo awards and six Nebula awards, and was awarded the Gandalf Grand Master award in 1979 and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award in 2003. She has received eighteen Locus Awards for her fiction, more than any other author. Her novel The Farthest Shore won the National Book Award for Children’s Books in 1973.
Le Guin was the Professional Guest of Honor at the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, Australia.”
Great to see so many excellent books recommended here.
Ursula le Guin, a personal favourite, is still going strong. The Earthsea Trilogy is now now five books, and I think book 4, Tehanu, completely exquisite, wise and heartbreaking. Especially for the older reader. I loved her recent trilogy, Gifts, Voices and Powers.
I have recently been knocked out by Victor Serge, a mid 20th century Russian writer (The Case of Comrade Tuleyev). As Sontag says in the intro, it’s amazing he’s not a household name. Incredible, staggering book: fiercely intelligent, fiercely ethical, fiercely human. As good as Dostoevsky. Possibly better. (Whatever that means, but anyone who can seriously rival Dostoevsky in my pantheon is getting high praise).
I’ve also been reading a bit of the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, who is brilliant. A couple of his books – I Served the King of England and Closely Observed Trains (which is a masterpiece) have been made into films, but read the books, they’re amazing. Too Loud a Solitude is a corker.
Anything by Joseph Roth, who writes almost hallucinatory lucid prose, or Ismael Kadare, none of whose books are like the others, but which all seem to be masterpieces. And a new favourite, Michele Desbordes, hard to get but amazing. Only two books in English, I fear, but both knockouts, they speak to me at very deep levels. And Arto Paasilini (The Howling Miller, The Year of the Hare), who is blackly and profoundly funny. Also a Norwegian writer, Per Petterson, again lucid and terribly, delicately honest.
I could go on, but I won’t, for fear of drowning myself in superlatives.
“Nabakov wanting to come in from the cold outside, in for a soft seat by the heater, two fingers of Macallan and a scratch between the ears, “
I was curled up next to the dryer all along.
Hmm…lot of the usual suspects recommended here.
Let me recommend a few things Rob that others wouldn’t or couldn’t and which I think would either take you out of your comfort zone…or expand it.
Francis Spufford’s:
The Child That Books Built – “those hours lost to the world in Swallows and Amazons or A Wizard of Earthsea.”
The Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin – fistfights at Woomera while launching satellites named after Shakespearean characters. Also how to put Concorde into profit and create in a white Bedford van the mapping tech for all cell phone base stations everywhere. “The isle is full of noises.”
I May be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination – or why Scott was a prick and Oates an arsehole but yet still resonate in our folk memories of exploring the last clean and cool frontier.
Songs They Never Play on the Radio – James Young
The story of Nico’s last ride by her last band leader and keyboardist. The single funniest book I’ve ever read about rock. And roll for that matter. It’s like a dead tree version of ‘24 Hour Party People’. The account of John Cale as a fat, money-sharp, boozing and farting Welsh Druid producing her last two albums is worth the price of purchase alone.
Tim Power’s various fantasy explorations. Patchy at times prose wise but he did come up with stuff like:
Declare – Le Carré meets HP Lovecraft with special guest appearances by Kim Philby, T.E Lawrence and Gertrude Bell. Djinn and soda.
The Anubis Gates – which culminates with Samuel Coleridge, whacked out on laudanum again, floating towards Ra underneath a 19th century genetically engineered London underworld. Then the main character kills himself in a duel. With himself.
On Stranger Tides – Zombie voodoo pirates long before Depp did Keef. And best description ever of Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth in the haunted Florida bayous.
The Stress Of Her Regard – in which Byron and Keats learn that if you’re gonna fuck around with succubae, you’d better keep moving so you won’t get stalked. And bonus! Venice gets saved from being sunk by heathen magic.
A History of Bombing – Sven Lindqvist.
If you like Brett’s Airminded blog, then you’ll like this – if this is the sorta thing you’ll like. And a very strange yet strangely effective narrative structure.
Rats, Lice and History – Hans Zinsser.
“Being a Study in Biography, Which, After Twelve Preliminary Chapters Indispensable for the Preparation of the Lay Reader, Deals With the Life History of Typhus Fever.”
Written 75 years ago and still pisses, craps and transmits fleas all over most pop-sci books now.
Jurgen – James Branch Cabell.
Smoothly elegant and slyly erotic fantasy. Like Beardsley’s “Under The Hill” without the unicorn masturbation. Or the Chronicles of Narnia for consenting and tipsy adults.
HL Mencken on Cabell “His gaudy heroes chase dragons precisely as stockbrokers play golf.” Also Cabell is one writer that looks exactly like he should.
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski.
Fuck “Infinite Jest” – this is the real thing. Plus it actually ends. The largest, most confusing yet haunting self-consciously big American Novel since Pynchon’s Rainbow. Obviously given that sell up description, your mileage may vary but you’ll certainly feel you’ve been taken for a ride. In every sense.
And let us not forget Kyril Bonfiglioli’s Charlie Mordecai books, “After You With The Pistol”, “Don’t Point That Thing At Me” and “Something Nasty In The Woodshed” – Chandler meets Wodehouse and far filthier than either – penned by a ex Guards Officer turned shonky arts dealer and full of practical tips for how to cheat at cards, smuggle old masters across frontiers and fry testicles with a car battery.
Speaking of burning balls, some stoushing footnotes.
““Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” by Ayn Rand.”
Crap writer and crazed cult leader pushing individualist excellence. Beyond parody.
“Science:_Primo Levi – The Periodic Table.”
Umm no…that book is not about science (unless you have to track down duff paint batches) – it’s about how you can’t fit the human experience into a testable grid.
And steer clear of anything by Peter Hamilton. It’s clunky 50s SF without the Dan Dare/EE Smith period charm. And he’s almost as bad a prose stylist as Mad Rand.
Ain’t obscure Asian history wars, although that’s what he’s famous for, but I got Alfred McCoy’s A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror for my birthday and I intend to start reading this weekend. Can’t wait!
Non Fiction
Life and Death of Democracy – John Keane
American Fiction
American Rust – Philip Meyer
Australian Fiction
The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas
Russian books you can read in one sitting
A Day in the Life of Alexander Denisovich
For something a bit lighter – perhaps Ishaguro’s new collection of short stories – Nocturnes.
Also, Richard Russo (Empire Falls) has a new bookout – That Old Cape Feeling. Russo is brilliant in the way he can combine humour and the depths of despair or desire in a single paragraph or observation. And his dialogue writing is, usually, cracking.
I’ve got another book I think you should read Rob.
“No Comment: Confessions of a Tardy Moderator”
Or I can resubmit my big comment that hasn’t appeared here yet if you like.
A fair while ago I read Our father by Bernice Rubens, which I thought was wonderful. I’ve since recommended it to many people, who have without exception found it impossible to finish. So I’m not sure if this is a recommendation or not. My real motive in posting is to try to move the tedious utegate thread down the page.
Robert, a ton of handy serving suggestions to nourish you between birthdays.
http://thisrecording.com/today/2009/8/3/in-which-these-are-the-100-greatest-writers-of-all-time.html
——————
“Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood. She still keeps insisting that she doesn’t write SF; this book gives that notion the lie. And the prose sparkles.”
D’accord, SL.
M.A. unleashes with one of her best literary combinations when Jimmy and Crake play Extinct-a-Thon. Prose with punch as well as sparkle. Sweet Science fiction.
@Baraholka
There’s some argument about just how much of Suetonius’ most salacious claims were fact or fiction. He probably didn’t make up those claims himself, granted. He does however appear to have been a moderately credulous collator of gossip and propaganda alongside actual facts.
Nabakov – ‘ “Science:_Primo Levi – The Periodic Table”
Umm no…that book is not about science (unless you have to track down duff paint batches) – it’s about how you can’t fit the human experience into a testable grid.’
egads you are soooooo right, i just don’t know what a bunch of crackpots like the Royal institute were doing calling it the “the best science book ever written”. WikiP quotes the Guadian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/oct/21/uk.books .
still a good book
what i cannot belive, is that i forgot to mention any books on my current “i havn’t got any copies left ’cause i lent them all out” list. two favs
Science and Government – CP Snow,
Vert – Jeff Noon
Anything by Joseph Roth, who writes almost hallucinatory lucid prose
.
Yeah. Only just found him recently. How did I ever live without him?
Tim Krabbe – The Rider. THE cycling novel!
Daniel Dennett – not so much his more recent stuff, but some of the older writing about consciousness and artificial intelligence is just wonderful.
Several people have named their favourite Russian, but Turgenev didn’t rate a mention – but he surely deserves one (as do Chekhov’s stories).
And venturing into fantasy/SF (which isn’t really my thing), Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is sensational.
Happy birthday, and may there be many years of reading ahead of you!
Shakelton’s “South” and Mawson’s “Home of the Blizzard” to make one feel that winter isn’t all that cold, really.
For “graphic novels” (a.k.a. ‘comic books’ or ‘manga’), “20th Century Boys”, which is about how the combined imaginations of a group of boys in Tokyo in 1970 turns into the End Of The World in 2000, 2015 and 2018. You can order a translated version to be imported, or read it on the ‘Web.
Obscure History: “That Old Sinner”, a rip-roaring tale of war, intrigue and dodgy finances on the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway’s Burtonport Extension.
And then there’s always The Life & Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, a fictional autobiography which goes off on a tangent half-way down the first page and finishes – eleven volumes later – at a point about four years before the narrator’s birth having told the reader nothing about the life and even less about the opinions of Tristram Shandy.
Some more suggestions:
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (as Melbourne has decent bookshops it should be possible to get an unabridged edition).
The Histories by Herodotus.
Gandalf’s Guide to Edible Fungi of Roadside Verges in North-West Eriador by J. R. R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien.
Another Russian novel – Oblomov. utterly brilliant.
And yet I didn’t much care it myself! I wonder what that means.
The thread Award goes to the delectable Alison Croggan for her enthusiastic and mouthwatering list of writers three of whom I’d never heard of and all of whom I now can’t wait to (re) read.
And if you’re going to buy books first check the Folio Society catalogue. Our gang is slowly but methodically replacing all the dull, mouldy old paperbacks that we can with these exquisitely bound, papered, scented, illustrated works of art.
There are no comics yet:
Stan Cross: any collection as long as it has for gorsake, stop laughing this is serious
Pogo
Doonesbury
Bruce Petty (Money and Australia fair)
alex
boondocks
Aaah. Oblomov. But not if you are nineteen and genuinely afraid you might never get out of bed.
Ah, but genevieve, he comes to his sense in the second half of the book if I remember correctly. Its been about five years or more since I read it.
Have been hanging around for a while and enjoy myself, thank you.
I am with Dilwah mediatracker, Nabakov on Primo Levi.
His ‘The Sixth Day’ is always handy to reassure me that I am human. Pertinent quote re science:
“If a committee of scientists were to take over God’s work, what sort of a world would they create?”
Would love to to read it in Italian, must be very poetic.
Have I missed something, no one mentioned any thing of Rushdies work. ‘Midnights Children” all time favorite, only book on an island kind of athing. Welcome to post- modernity to me, reading it in India.
PN @ 96,
Recntly read ‘The Man Who Invented History: Travels with Herodotus’ by Justin Marozzi. A rare skill to excel in relevant historical analysis, biography and entertaining travel writing. Clearly brought home again how timeless classics like Herodotus are. BTW when Marazzi visited an aging British author living in Greece, they got stuck into the local homebrew, retsina etc. and loosened up. Anyway, the talk came to personal reference libraries, where the guest declared anyone should at least have five shelves of it! Fair enough.
rummaging …. now you got me going …… you might want to plan a trip to the Antiquariat or Ruths woman shelter second hand bookshop, see if you can find a gem, lucky even hand signed and dedicated as well. You’ll always remember ‘that’ birthday.
The plain people of Ireland also draw your attention to himself.
Now was he a cataclysm of cliche?
Not as so what the Brother would take exception to.
Herr-Professor Nabakov: yoiks, what an oversight! I’d forgotten completely about that brilliant gent for a spell.
‘When stags appear
On the mountain high,
With flanks the colour of bran,
When a badger bold can say good-bye,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.’
FWIW, I noticed a while ago that Langston Hughes used to do a column in the 40s that was comedically similar to Myles’s “the Brother” routine. Don’t know enuf about literary research to tell who influenced whom, or whether they were each just blissfully unaware of one another. I can’t imagine the two of them getting along… or can I?