Novels make life worth living.
I read a lot. I used to hoard books as a testament to my reading accomplishments. After about my four hundredth move, it occurred to me that I could be living a lot more simply. I gave away all my books, and now I mainly read library books. Every once in a while I buy a book, but usually, I'll pass it along when I am done reading it. The energy of books is powerful, and isn't supporting the library system a noble thing?
If you, on the other hand, prefer to own your books, know that you can click on the links below to purchase my book recommendations through my Powell's Books partnership. (That's right, passive income for moi!)
Books I love.
I like books with a good rich narrative and well developed characters. I also like books that are funny. That's pretty much all it takes to please me. If you, too, have an easily entertainable mind and a disdain for Oprah books, take my word.
Rest assured that I will never recommend a self-help book!
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
The first and, as far as I know, the only novel ever written by Kiwi Keri Hulme, it tells the story of an unlikely family in the form of a mute orphan, a Maori widower, and a surly woman who lives alone — a hermit in a tower. Full of intricate descriptions and replete with a Maori glossary, this one strikes deep to the creative heart of the matter.
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson
When I read this book I was traveling a lot, and laughed out loud so many times on airplanes that I eventually had to stop reading it in public places. About a curmudgeonly old dude who moves to a hilltop in the Italian Alps to get away from it all and write a book, but ends up locked in a battle of wills with his hateful neighbor. He tries to kill her with kindness by constantly inviting her over for dinner and whipping up truly revolting concoctions like "Fernet Branca and garlic ice cream."
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Forget the movie (excellent, but different). So impeccably written, so engaging and riveting. Pure poetry. A Hungarian count mistaken for an English spy in the last days of World War II; a French Canadian nurse in love with a Sikh; a posse of British expatriates adrift in the African desert. But the real main character of The English Patient is a world senselessly delineated by maps and borders that ruin lives, break hearts, and determine fates at seeming random. Heartbreaking, deep, and powerful.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran
I adored every minute of this book. About a nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player, and pacifist. If you read the back of this jacket, you might not quite get the gist of the prize that lies within. I picked this one up and put it back down a million times until it was synchronistically recommended to me three times in one week. Taking this leap of faith was the best decision I ever made. It made me feel like one hundred dollars.
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
I am generally late to hop on bandwagons but I am jumping on this one unabashedly. This was the first Franzen book I actually enjoyed (although I did struggle partway through The Corrections and How To Be Alone) and I get it now. I get the Franzen furor. This is a book that will make you ashamed of your freedom and long for the imprisonment of a bourgeois life.
Frannie and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The other great J.D. Salinger book. I am not exaggerating when I say this novel may have gotten me through growing up. My first copy was my mother's old paperback from the 60's. About a girl so full of malaise that she can't be bothered to get off the couch. Besides, the cat is so comfortable. Sample quote: "I'm just so sick of pedants and conceited little tearer-downers I could scream."
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
I would tell you about this brilliantly inventive children's book by one of my favorite writers, but it's a P2C2E.
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
I don't often think that men can write about women in a way that's true, but Michael Cunningham nailed it in this heartwrenching paean to poetry, flowers, life, and suicide. It's also a rare example of a book that translated well into a movie. Makes me pretty much despondent every time.
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
This is the book that if I recommend it to someone and they don't like it, I make a silent little note of judgment in my mind. About a young Indian boy who, after a strange series of perfect-storm-like incidents, gets stranded on a small boat in the Atlantic Ocean with a tiger. But not really about that at all, in the end. Makes you think hard about what it means to believe in something.
I had the pleasure of hearing Yann Martel speak, and it changed my life. I wrote about it in a little ditty called Read a Fucking Book.
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie is a brilliant fiction writer unfortunately best known for his scandalous and controversial fourth book, The Satanic Verses. Midnight's Children is usually considered to be (and is) his best book. It won the Booker Prize in 1981, and then won the Booker of all Bookers later on down the line. What's it about? I don't really remember. I just remember that it was a joy to read, had a lot of very vivid descriptions of chutneys, and enthralled me from beginning to end.
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
Miranda July is weird, and her short stories are creepy. And those are compliments. I wish that I wrote these stories, but I didn't, so all I can do is hope that someday Miranda July will acquiesce to being my best friend. But she probably won't, because she clearly doesn't need people. I aspire.
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
At 565 pages, it took a certain grim determination to get through this old classic under library due-date pressure, but hells am I glad I did. About the meaning of life (hint: there is none) and the human condition. If you're basically a depressive, like me, and you wonder what you might have in common with a 30-year old dude with a club foot in early 20th-century England, read Of Human Bondage.
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
A story about a "half-mad expedition to transport a glass church across the Outback." I had to look that up on Powell's because I read it years ago and the plot is hazy. What I do remember clearly is that I was mesmerized by the descriptions of the glass chapel floating through the jungle, and the tragic relationship between Oscar (played by Ralph Fiennes in the movie) and Lucinda (played by Cate Blanchett). I liked the movie too. But that's another list.
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
I love me some fictionalized biblical history. This story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and sister of Joseph (he of the technicolor dreamcoat), is the vivid adventure you don't hear in the Bible: how Dinah was first built up and then vilified by her family tribe. How she was forced to rely on her own internal strength and surpass heartbreak and trauma in order to go on to become of the most revered midwives in the land. This is a story every woman should read. Men, don't bother.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Not funny. Not funny at all. Dark, actually. Depressing, to say the least. And, in a strange and twisted way, kind of uplifting. Does that make me mental? At any rate, Cormac McCarthy is a contemporary American literary genius. He can write the hell out of a story.
Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
There is nothing so hilarious as a fucked up childhood. Except a fucked up childhood that took place in my hometown. This book reminds me of the band of freaks that used to take care of me and my brother when my mom was single and working. I was terrified by and fascinated with the lot of them. My favorite quote ever comes from the opening of this book: "Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it."
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
It's a wee bit on the long side and tends toward the too-gangster-for-me at points, but the brilliant first page of this memoir-ish novel won me over for good. The cadence is riveting, and throughout there were plenty of spiritual insights to keep me tidily impressed. Also, there is nothing like the sense of accomplishment after finishing a book that's bigger than your head.
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I recently re-read this classic after seeing the imaginative movie Midnight in Paris. This was one of my favorite books as a teenager, and now I remember why. Fitzgerald, besides being a raving alcoholic who partied himself out by the age of 44, was a brilliant and troubled novelist with a fantastically dramatical life. Tender is the Night is the story of a bunch of privileged expats in France who combat their upper class ennui by constantly creating drama of the most useless order.
Troubles by J.G. Farrell
A kooky story about a British army officer who comes to Ireland to finally be with his longtime fiance after the Great War ends in 1919. His fiance turns out to be a spooky freak and basically disappears shortly into the book, leaving him to make his way among the other riffraff who seem to live permanently in the ramshackle hotel her father owns on the sea. All around them, Ireland is falling apart because of "the troubles." Riveting. (And here is why it won the Lost Booker Prize in 2010, even though it was written in 1970.)
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
Damn beautiful, haunting and sad story of the black plague and how suffering destroys faith. "I cannot say I have faith anymore. Hope, perhaps. We hve agreed that it will do, for now."
PS If you're ever at a loss for what to read, you can't go wrong by picking a book off the Booker Prize list. They are, without exception, all phenomenal reads.
