Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/04/18/get-lost-in-one-of-50-contempo.html
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Huh, i would say that Dlahgren is indeed strange, but one of the worst sci fi novels of all time. YMMV
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Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai is a masterpiece. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
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Dhalgren is the epitome of YMMV. I liked it, though I won’t claim to have really understood it. The Paris Review blog recently had a mini-essay about it.
I was surprised by a couple of choices.
I very much enjoyed The Last Samurai and A naked singularity, and was happy to see them here. Mr. Norrell was a total bust; could not get into it and was surprised as to the good reviews it got.
Less surprising is Cloud Atlas, which is both excellent writing and a page-turner.
Of the usual suspects, Infinite Jest is a rewarding read, with enough humor and high jinks to keep you going. All the long Pynchon books are good candidates, but Mason & Dixon is probably the best choice. JR is Gaddis’ best.
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I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed losing myself in massive tomes 
It’s bean a while since I’ve been able to read for pleasure. I hope that I am able to change that in the coming months (one program wraps up in May and a new one starts in August, so I might actually have a chance to dive into some books in the intervening months).
I read Midnight’s Children in high school and remember really enjoying it. I like Rushdie’s writing style. The first half of Winter’s Tale is fantastic, but I had a hard time staying engaged in the second half (both of those novels probably warrant a re-read at this point, it’s been so long). Cloud Atlas has been on my to-read list for a while. Maybe this summer…
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Mason & Dixon is great fun, but if you’re being ambitious: A screaming comes across the sky!
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Just pick up any Neal Stephenson book. If you can.
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That’s not true. Some of his early books were pocket size. Weren’t “Zodiac”, “Snow Crash” and “Diamond Age” all reasonably sized? I know I read at least one of those, and have a couple of his later books that are on hold because of their daunting size.
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Snow Crash: 480pp hardcover, 559pp Kindle
Diamond Age: 455pp hardcover, 512pp paperback.
I thought I could get away with it, but you got me.
[slinks away in shame]
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I’m reading Powers’ The Overstory right now.
It’s great! Funny (for me) that it’s first on the list.
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I’d also add Robert Coover’s The Public Burning. The fact that this novel isn’t generally mentioned in the same breath as Catch-22 and Gravity’s Rainbow seems an oversight. Written in the late 70s, it’s about the Rosenberg executions. The chapters alternate between a surreal, poetic fugue (cf. The Grapes of Wrath) and first person narration by then Vice-President Nixon. It takes place in this satiric version of America, where the Rosenberg execution is being held in Times Square and the president will spontaneously transmogrify into Uncle Sam for brief periods of time. It is unrelentingly and hilariously brutal to Nixon, which is always nice.
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I see lots of good books on this list and also The Grace of Kings. Putting it there, next to stuff like Jonathan Strange or The Fifth Season is rather unfortunate, to say the least.
In any case, I’d also recommend David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks. It’s less ambitious than Cloud Atlas, but the different chapters are more directly connected to each other.
Do NOT read VC Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic right now.
I finished it last night. It is shorter than these books (400 pages on the softback library copy I nabbed pre-quarrantine). It reads quickly. It is nicely written. It is horrifying. There’s not one scary moment in the whole book, and yet it is scary. And the premise is about locked away, missing love and contact and freedom, but having that happen slowly and cruelly and almost unnoticed.
NOT a good quarrantine book.
A great book, though!
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What they may lack in page count, they more than make up for by being extremely engrossing!
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LOL’ed at the description for The Corrections, fits with my opinion of the book. Incidentally, reading that book (and IQ84) on public transportation was what pushed me to e-reader ownership.
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I have a theory about Stephenson and how he has either stopped listening to editors, or editors are afraid of him. Or maybe even the editors are like “Well, I went though the first 500 pages, I’ll just say the rest is fine.”
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I’d throw The Thorn Birds on this list.
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So much to read. So little time… even these days.
Three recommendations for y’all:
If you liked the 1980 miniseries Shogun, you’ll love James Clavell’s novel. Having watched the miniseries, I can say that it had no negative effect on my reading enjoyment; the book is dense and thorough in describing the complicated politics of 17th c. Europe – and the even more complicated politics of 17th c. Japan. The miniseries had its heart in the right place, but in all ways is the Reader’s Digest version of the novel. An 802 page-turner that kept me very happy while in our vanpool; those 3-hour roundtrip commutes flew by.
The Secret Parts of Fortune, by Ron Rosenbaum; 798 pages. Over 50 unexpected, enthralling, revelatory essays that cover seemingly everything: Hitler; Lee Harvey Oswald; Elvis Presley; the Yale Skull and Bones Society; and Charmin toilet tissue’s Mr. Whipple. You see where I’m going here?
Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin; 916 pages. If you enjoyed Lincoln (2012), then you may wish to get into ToR, only one section of which enabled all of the Lincoln film. Goodwin’s writing and attention to historical detail is genius.
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