Excellent Fiction
Submitted by ender22d on Tue, 02/20/2001 - 10:02
Tags:
- Invisible Cities--Italo Calvino
- Look Homeward, Angel--Thomas Wolfe
- Lord of the Rings--J.R.R. Tolkien
- Native Son--Richard Wright
- The Virtual Light Trilogy (VL, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties)--William Gibson
- The Killer Angels--Michael Shaara
- The Stand--Stephen King
- The Far Pavilions--M.M. Kaye
- Lost Horizon--James Hilton
- Enigma--Robert Harris
- The Lathe of Heaven--Ursula K. LeGuin
- Ender's Game--Orson Scott Card
- Ishmael--Daniel Quinn (an environmental fiction piece)
- In the Loyal Mountains--Rick Bass (short story collection)
- Good Benito--Alan Lightman
- Einstein's Dreams--Alan Lightman (both little books, both delicate and worth the little time it takes to read them)
- Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West--Cormac McCarthy
Author Comments:
just a collection of books/stories that interest me enough to own and re-read
Wow! William Gibson and James Hilton on the same list. Can you say 'eclectic'?
How much King have you read? I prefer IT to THE STAND. The latest of his I've read is BAG OF BONES, in which I was very disappointed. However, the second-latest I've read, DESPERATION, is classic King - fully recommended.
Bertie--I've read most of King's work published before @ 1995, then I got out of his stuff. Truth to tell, "The Stand" barely squeezed out "The Dark Tower" series in my opinion. I didn't include it because I think "The Gunslinger" and "The Drawing of the Three" are hard to get though or get interested in. I loved "The Waste Lands" as well as "Wizard and Glass". How's that poem go? "Bird and bear and hare and fish, give my love her fondest wish..."
Haven't read the "Dark Tower" series, because I have an irrational prejudice against series novels; I prefer stand-alone novels.
Btw, I'm bound to say that Ursula LeGuin has written better novels than the one you list. Have you read her THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS?
Actually, I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine who really liked both, but easily preferred The Lathe of Heaven. You are the opposite, I assume?
I must admit that I have read more of LeGuin's short stories than her full novels. I am at the moment rereading The Wizard of Earthsea: I hadn't noticed that Harry Potter has a lot in common with it! I read recently that LeGuin has distanced herself from the Earthsea series, as if perhaps they were a mistake.
In any case, I have not read The Left Hand of Darkness, so I can't say which is better. I like Lathe... because it touches on that common idea of wishing the problems of the world away.
Update: finished Left Hand of Darkness and the second and third books of the Earthsea saga. I liked The Furthest Shore, but I wasn't so sure about The Tombs of Atuan. Of the three so far I liked Wizard the most. Anyway, Left Hand was very interesting. LeGuin did a fine job of world-building and sexual politics study. I think I need more time to think it over however, before I label it her best work.
I was intersted to see you liked Ishmael. Did you see the HORRIBLE (I hope you didn't like it) adaptation called Instinct, which basically cast Anthony Hopkins in role of Ishmeal (only he was a human), and Cuba Gooding Jr, in the role of the author? What did you think?
oh dear god that wasn't what Instinct was about, was it? That makes me sad. No, I haven't seen it and now really , really, really don't plan to. Thanks for the warning...
Einstein's Dreams was amazing. I had almost fogotten about that book. I'll have to go back and read it again now. Anyone else read it? oh, and what's this about making the Tolkien seris into movies? There's no way they can do it justice, and I'm almost afraid to go and see them when they come out.
I liked it as well..
Glad you liked Einstein's Dreams. If you haven't already, I would heartily recommend Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. It is an amazing peice of work and like ...Dreams as it is a series of discriptions of cities that a traveler (Marco Polo) has visited. I wish I could better discribe it. Anyone else read it?
I am ambivalent about the Tolkien movies. Having read LOTR around 15 times, I'm sure that I'll find fault with the whole thing. But there is hope, and maybe the movie will convince others to read the books as well. If you want to check out the best source of info on the movies, go to
www.tolkien-movies.com or www.tolkien.nu
I've not read that one but have read quite a few other books by Calvino..
I've only read four of Calvino's works, and I enjoy Invisible Cities far more than the others. The other three were If On A Winter's Night a Traveler (which has to be one of the coolest titles I have read in quite some time), The Baron of the Trees (?), and The Castle of Crossed Destinies. I'm not sure I "get" Calvino, which is probably why I like Invisible Cities...it is not extremely deep. Still, it has a place on my shelf so that I can flip through every so often to try to understand it all.
I've read those 3 plus The Path to the Nest of Spiders and Cosmicomics.