I need to read an AMAZING book ASAPN.

well, i don't know about GREAT but I gotta say, I was utterly wrecked by both Solar by Ian McEwan, his newest, and Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. The latter is probably sadder and more GREAT.

Beatrice and Virgil!.... oh wait...

What kinda genre or mood are you looking for?

Junkie.

You, Mirka, not the book of the same name. Shameless, coming 'round begging for another hit. You've lost control of your life.

(PS don't really like Audrey Sniffyfdsfnjdkswegger or IanMcEwan but keep the suggestions coming)

Also, you're spreading your addiction. I'm still fucked for any new fiction since Await Your Reply. I've made it forty pages into so many books, but just can't find it in myself to continue them.

Chasing the dragon,
Berto.

pff, then you suggest something! christ.

Well, thanks but I was agreeing with Mirka, Levi! I wanna be recommended a book not give out suggestions godammit! One that makes me stay up all night and will change my life!
(I've read a few of IanMcEwan's and tried to read Audrey, but didn't get very far).

Mirka - what was the book that made you lose sleep five months ago?

Did you miss my post about Await Your Reply (Dan Chaon) forever changing my personal literary landscape? It's like my brain's written word receptors refuse all else since I bought a ticket for that ride.

i'm just bitter you don't like my two faves. Sorry I was butthurt. haha!

I too would like to be recommended a life shattering book.

The book that made me lose sleep five months ago.....Probably Atonement? Maybe Amsterdam. Both are McEwan though.

I'm re-reading some of my very favorite Roald Dahl Short Stories right now. I stayed up until four oclock last night reading. Love it.

When I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being I thought you would definitely like it. I couldn't relate to much of the story, but it's kind of heartbreaking at times. The author begins chapters with brilliant, succinct philosophical musings that are pretty intense, about life and depression and being, living. It's mostly about two lovers who can't figure out how to be faithful to each other, it's about a thousand acts of sabotaged faith that exist in the lovers' minds, and are sometimes as silly as one night that both lovers agree they had the best sex of their lives, and the thing the girl remembers most is that it was raining, like that was the perfect backdrop, but the man doesn't remember that it was even raining so she feels like he wasn't even really there with her in the same way. Its unbearably human.

2666 is also great. There's parts of it I know you'll love, but its incredibly long and opposite itself at times; it begins with a story about three literary fiends who love the work of a fictional writer called Archimboldi, and then it follows a black writer covering a boxing match in Mexico, and then it covers the imprisonment of a man convicted of hundreds of murders, about a hundred pages of descriptions of dead girls, his love affair with his lawyer, and then it completes with the life of Archimboldi, and ends with a story about Archimboldi's younger sister and her son, which is about the best thirty pages that thirty pages could ever be.

My favorite novel I've read so far this year was The Haunting of Hill House. But you don't much dig genre fiction.

I know so many people who have read 2666.

I should read The Haunting of Hill House. I love Shirley Jackson, and the old original movie really freaked me out, and I bet it was closer to the book that most recent movie. I will look into it.

This is a really obvious choice that you might have read already, but I just read One Hundred Years of Solitude and thought it was fucking incredible.

I didn't like the 'Unbearable Lightness of Being' much, either. I read 'We have Always Lived in the Castle' almost once a year, but I have not read 'Hill House'.

I have, and have tried to read The Savage Detectives, but couldn't get into it. I'm not sure if I like Roberto Bolano's style.

Levi, 'Solar' is on it's way. I read 'Her Fearful Symmetry' in manuscript form, ha!

Actually, "Foam of the Daze" by Boris Vian is also amazing, and has the best ending I've ever read. It opens with a guy trimming his eyebrows, and he has eels pulled from drain pipes for dinner.

I have, and agree! Garcia Marquez is my favorite writer. I bought '100 Years to read on a flight from London to the US, and I ended up spending my LAST night in London READING it and didn't sleep at all!

I'm sorry!

-Kicking the Hornet's Nest
Mirka

you'll like solar.

Did you like Her Fearful Symmetry?

P.S. I like everything, including genre fiction. I love Stephen King, the Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card, Elmore Leonard...I just love a good book, it doesn't have to be high faultin'.

Serve the People! by Yan Lianke. It's beautifully written and the story is intense, can't put it down. It's a light book however but very enjoyable.

I'm looking forward to 'Solar'. Is it as good as 'Atonement'? Or close??

I didn't really like either of Nifeneggar's books all that much, but finished both.

Hmmm, sounds intriguing.

I'm going to recommend 'The Tin Drum' by Gunter Grass now to anyone looking for a book in this thread. (I mean, after you finish 'Await Your Reply' by Dan Chaon.)

The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse

I'll look it up now, I've never heard of it.

I read it, but it didn't knock me on my ass. I've read all his work, good stuff.

I really need to read Ender's Game.

You really do. I can't believe you haven't already! It's like 'Gunslinger', short and perfect and then spawns a series that gets more and more convoluted, but not as good.

I'll check out more Card, the ones you mentioned. I haven't because he's a hatemonger, but seriously, the Ender Game series is so good that I can't help but give it to people or recommend it all the time. In fact, I may just reread it this week. All of them.

ALSO THE TWELVE. Fuck that was good. A man is followed by the ghosts of a dozen whose lives he's responsible for having lost, either people he killed himself or allowed to die, and with every person he kills a ghost disappears. He ends up trying to save the life of a woman and her daughter; he's an alcoholic in northern Ireland in political/gang (Gigganly synonymous) crime. Every chapter packs a punch, I think that's the fastest I downed a book last year was with The Twelve. It's short, but not too short. It's interesting because even when the main character is alone, he has so much to react to.

I've been building a science fiction reading list, but its not time yet. I wanna finish what I've started with horror/fantasy first, but I'm getting more and more eager to read the Ender's series. Everybody seems to love them, and Card runs circles around the fantasy court. I can't wait to see him in Science Fiction where he has more room.

holy shit seventh son sounds epic.

"The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester was an incredible sci-fi book. I'm not generally keen on the genre, but that was incredible. I'd recommend the hell out of it.

Everyone does love it. Stephen Graham Jones loves it! My brother, Dushan, who has only read THREE books for pleasure, loved it. Wait, only two, Ender's Game and Black Hawk Down.

Wonderful! I forgot all about Bester, I read 'The Demolished Man', I gotta reread that and get 'Stars', too.

Do you like Phillip K. Dick at all?

I've only read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and "The Man in the High Castle". I loved them both, but that was a long time ago. Actually I was thinking of reading "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch". Any recommendations?

I can get behind the Seventh Son and entire Alvin Maker series. Not as good as Ender, but really fucking good. I thought, though i read it a millennia ago.

I think everyone should read The Magus by John Fowles, though. I can honestly say it's one of the top five books i've ever read. It's long and it swirls and you'll lose track of the ground from those heights even though you're nearly drowning, and it'll break your heart to pieces over and over again, but keep trying, desperately, to put the pieces back together and in order, but things get confused and what was here ends up over there and who is who and what is what is lost somewhere between the cover art, but it's a book that'll change you a bit and the last sentence is the most powerful things i've ever read, truthfully, and when i got there the book almost slipped from my hands and i wanted to cry and i wanted to breathe, but i couldn't do either so i read it again and again and again until it was all i could see for the rest of the day on every wall and every face. If it weren't for Dostoevsky, i'd probably even say it's the best book i've read, but it begins a bit slow. Don't let that deter you, because every story ever told in the past and future is held within it. Make sure to get the definitive edition, though.

Stigmata! I recommend that one.

It makes me laugh that I can't write that I love him the way I would write "I love Jackson" because writing "I love Dick" looks so very wrong capitalized!

Yeah, definitely. That book's amazing. Everyone should read it, especially if your roommate bought you a copy two years ago and you haven't even touched it. Phil.

This thread is reminding me that I've been terribly slack with my reading habits of late. I need to get back into some quality literature. I might just have to search for some of these suggestions.

I go through weird reading lulls occasionally. Actually, it had never happened to me until two summers ago. I just couldn't read for a few weeks, though i did end up reading forty books that summer, despite it all. And then last year, i only read twelve books total, ten of them in january. So far this year, i've read about thirty or so books. Maybe more. It's been a good reading year.

mirka.... world leader pretend. james bernard frost.

Dude, I thought you were mocking me until I googled the author's name. Hee.

Added to my cart.

i like this thread lots.

dan, who wrote the twelve?

I too need a book. I just finished and loved beat the reaper, does anyone know of any similar books? like quick, witty books with action too?

this thread is too much. it's not specific enough! my mind is blowing.

i think Berto mentioned The Enders Game to me the other day, i haven't heard of it.

and, Mirka, i want to recommend something Australian for you to read, but i'm not sure if your mind will be blown, and i don't want to recommend anything for the fear that you'll think Aussie Lit is shite.

Dan, The Twelve sounds incredible. i searched it on amazon and coudn't find it.

Peter Carey? 'The Fat Man in History', 'Oscar and Lucinda'??

Take a chance..

they are both fantastic books. Peter Carey is definitely gifted. what about The Illywacker? i think you may like that one.

or, maybe a classic: Helen Garner's Monkey Grip.

too, Luke Davies' Candy (if you haven't alread read it) and Isabelle the Navigator. these ones probably won't blow your mind. but they're both beautiful stories.

I know they're fantastic, I've read them! I'll check out your suggestion.