Favorite Non-dance (*gasp*) Books?

Fun to read everyone's favorites.

Special shout out to pygmalion and Gen Redux for mentioning Evelyn Waugh! _A Handful of Dust_ is my favorite of his too. I have actually laughed myself silly over the thought of Tony Last trapped in the jungle forced to read Dickens out loud, forever. (And I teach Victorian Literature!)

I have to take issue with the claim that there is little good written after 1950. Oh my gosh, there is SO much fantastic stuff being written! If you like literature, how can you not be delighted by at least some of the following?

Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children)
Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy = WOW!)
Philip Roth (Portnoy's Complaint, The Human Stain, American Pastoral)
Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin, Alias Grace, The Handmaid's Tale)
Kazuo Ishiguro
Pat Barker (her World War trilogy is amazing)
Zadie Smith
Sarah Waters (If you like classic gothic tales, try Fingersmith.)
Don DeLillo (White Noise)
Toni Morrison


Some of the best I've read in the past year or so:

Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (I have recommended this book to so many people and so far, everyone has enjoyed it. Very quick read, and a very insightful book for a post-9/11 world.)

Salman Rushdie, Empress of Florence (If you haven't been exposed to Rushdie's storytelling style, you are missing out on a real treat! He's not everybody's cup of tea, of course, but if you like intricate, interwoven tales and an amazing prose style, he may be your man.)

Phillip Roth, Indignation and Exit, Ghost (Probably the most impressive living American writer. From early works like Portnoy's Complaint to most recent classics like The Human Stain, Roth amazes me. Some of his recent works write about old age with unflinching candor.)

J. M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year (Very po-mo in style, with two or even three different texts on each page, which obviously intersect and impact on each other.)


I'm currently reading and really enjoying Aravind Adiga's _White Tiger_, which won this year's Booker Prize.
 
I like Rushdie's Empress of Florence.

Roth is a brilliant writer but cold blooded unfeeling candour would be my description. I read the Dying Animal and thought what a waste of talent. I read Ishiguro until Remains of The Day which bored me rigid but I loved a Pale View of Hills.
 
Devil in the White City
Knights Templar
Map of Bones
Anything by Shakespeare
Anything by Dan Brown
Anything by Ian Fleming
 
bordertangoman said:
I like Rushdie's Empress of Florence.

Roth is a brilliant writer but cold blooded unfeeling candour would be my description. I read the Dying Animal and thought what a waste of talent. I read Ishiguro until Remains of The Day which bored me rigid but I loved a Pale View of Hills.
Click to expand...

The Dying Animal is the worst book he has written in years, possibly ever, so I actually agree with you there!

But that unfortunate volume aside, I find him anything but unfeeling. I am deeply moved by so many of his books. American Pastoral--the pain of living with the knowledge that your child has done something unforgivable. The Human Stain--the guilt and shame of "passing," living a double life, in denial of one's true racial identity, family, and past. The shame is so deep and abiding that even when telling the truth would keep the main character from losing his job...he doesn't do it. He can't.

Roth is from the same part of New Jersey as my Mom, and he conjures up the old Jewish Newark (and sometimes New York) and the lives of the tradespeople there with incomparable care. It is like a love letter to a world that has passed away, the way he describes the work of the leather workers who made gloves, the kosher butcher, the jewelers in Brooklyn, etc.

I also love the earlier, humorous Roth. Portnoy's Complaint is one of those books everyone should read in college.

****
I also have to admit to a bit of a soft spot for Ian Fleming. I actually had an article published on Fleming, John Osborne, and Kingsley Amis in "the minnesota review" a few years back. (They did a special issue on the 1950s.)
 
Most of my literary tastes don't run quite so traditionally classic, unfortunately. However, I'll put my favorite author's storytelling skills up against any other author.

James Herriot. (All Creatures Great and Small etc..)

As for children's literature....All the Little House books..."Where the Wild Things Are"...anything written by Walter Farley (Little Black, the Pony...The Black Stallion...etc)....anything by Judy Blume....and basically any book I could find that told a horse story. :-)
 
Slightly off topic, but oh well...

So since there are a bunch of readers here, can anyone tell me if there's something fantastic about Of Human Bondage that I'm just not getting? Is there some big theme that I should keep in mind as I read it, which will help me to see it in a new light?

I read it about 15 years ago...and hated it. I'm rereading it again now...and I have even less patience for it now than I did then. I really just want to smack the main character, and I'm not even finding the writing particularly pleasant. It's not because of the older writing style, which I like just fine, it's just striking me as being particularly hackneyed.
 
Terry Goodkind's The legend of the Seeker series (11 books I believe) so good. (now it is a TV series because Disney picked it up.) Let me tell you the books are SOOOOOO much better. Very vivid. The series destroyed the images I had in my mind.

These books are a great escape to veg but without the trash. Very well written
 
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse by Jared Diamond
Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson
 
Riding Between the Worlds by Linda Kohanov

"Two years ago author and horse trainer Linda Kohanov wrote "The Tao of Eguus--a daring multidisciplinary exploration of the powerful spiritual, emotional, and psychological connections between people and horses, its provocative narrative, blending her story of prescient dreams and ancestral communication with a wide-ranging exploration of equine-facilitated therapy practices, created a worldwide demand for her workshops and lectures she also received more than 1,000 letters from readers around the world describing their own strange and wonderful experiences with horses. In "Riding Between the worlds, Kohanov continues sharing the story of her own journey of healing and transformation and further develops the ideas introduced in "The Tao of Equus, bolstering her groundbreaking theories with anecdotal evidence. Where her previous book laid the theoretical groundwork for expanding our emotional, mental, and spiritual view of horses, "Riding Between the worlds concentrates on the extraordinary stories that support this view."

synopsis
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Dance Ads

Advertise on Dance Forums Reach dancers, teachers, studios, event organizers, and dance-friendly brands. View ad options
Back
Top