I'm slowly in the process of re-arranging my library, and I've noticed that I have much more non-fiction (and poetry) than I do fiction. I know I have much more ease with non-fiction. I find fiction more of a challenge for some unknown reason-- but when I find fiction I can really enjoy, I find it much more rewarding than non-fiction.
I've done much better in the past years with my fiction reading, but still find my library unbalanced. I thought this would be a good place for fiction book recommendations.
The two novels I've read (both in the past five years) that I would personally rank highest is Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Toni Morrison's Beloved.
Dostoevsky deals with lots of philosophical questions (which he wisely never resolves neatly). In Crime and Punishment the big question is: Can the ends justify the means? The main character discovers that ideology and reality don't always meet up (apparently an obsession of Dostoevsky's). The first few chapters take some getting used to, but the characters are rich, complex and memorable (especially the absurd and pathetic Katerina Ivanovna). I read the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
Beloved also deals with an unresolvable moral quandary, based on a true story of an escaped slave in the antebellum US south who murdered her children when the slave catchers found her-- her sad logic being that her children were better off dead than being brought back to slavery (before anyone thinks that it couldn't be THAT bad, read some US history). The novel is an ambiguous ghost story-- but it is really more about the feelings of guilt the mother has years later after the Civil War. Reading this was a bit difficult at first because it is not told merely in chronological order, but I think with a book dealing with painful memories like what these characters would have suffered, it makes sense-- there are evasions of memory that run throughout the book.
I think the thing that interests me with these two books (and some others that I have read), is that, unlike philosophy, such characters are unsystematic, inconsistent, often ambivalent, and not as neatly rational-- in other words, more lifelike. Even when the characters are larger than life, it is only because they amplify intensely such questions we sometimes encounter ourselves. The novels I enjoy the most teach me not only something the world around me, but about myself. These are the only two books I recall that have ever brought me to tears-- well, and also Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (easy enough for movies, but I'm not usually that responsive to books).
The other night I just finished A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by the Austrian writer Peter Handke (who wrote much of the poetic screenplay for Wim Wender's Wings of Desire). Its a short semi-autobiographical novel about his mother who committed suicide after the cancer she had made her life unbearable for her. Its peculiar how it is written, in an almost clinical way, yet his grief comes through in spite of this approach-- he cannot contain the event in language. Not light reading!
I've just started on Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. I saw the movie last year and was very impressed (an utterly humorless film, which is unusual for the Coen brothers). So far it reads well enough and I'm enjoying it...
~~~
Anyone else? Recommendations? Favorites? Experiences?
I've done much better in the past years with my fiction reading, but still find my library unbalanced. I thought this would be a good place for fiction book recommendations.
The two novels I've read (both in the past five years) that I would personally rank highest is Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Toni Morrison's Beloved.
Dostoevsky deals with lots of philosophical questions (which he wisely never resolves neatly). In Crime and Punishment the big question is: Can the ends justify the means? The main character discovers that ideology and reality don't always meet up (apparently an obsession of Dostoevsky's). The first few chapters take some getting used to, but the characters are rich, complex and memorable (especially the absurd and pathetic Katerina Ivanovna). I read the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
Beloved also deals with an unresolvable moral quandary, based on a true story of an escaped slave in the antebellum US south who murdered her children when the slave catchers found her-- her sad logic being that her children were better off dead than being brought back to slavery (before anyone thinks that it couldn't be THAT bad, read some US history). The novel is an ambiguous ghost story-- but it is really more about the feelings of guilt the mother has years later after the Civil War. Reading this was a bit difficult at first because it is not told merely in chronological order, but I think with a book dealing with painful memories like what these characters would have suffered, it makes sense-- there are evasions of memory that run throughout the book.
I think the thing that interests me with these two books (and some others that I have read), is that, unlike philosophy, such characters are unsystematic, inconsistent, often ambivalent, and not as neatly rational-- in other words, more lifelike. Even when the characters are larger than life, it is only because they amplify intensely such questions we sometimes encounter ourselves. The novels I enjoy the most teach me not only something the world around me, but about myself. These are the only two books I recall that have ever brought me to tears-- well, and also Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (easy enough for movies, but I'm not usually that responsive to books).
The other night I just finished A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by the Austrian writer Peter Handke (who wrote much of the poetic screenplay for Wim Wender's Wings of Desire). Its a short semi-autobiographical novel about his mother who committed suicide after the cancer she had made her life unbearable for her. Its peculiar how it is written, in an almost clinical way, yet his grief comes through in spite of this approach-- he cannot contain the event in language. Not light reading!
I've just started on Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. I saw the movie last year and was very impressed (an utterly humorless film, which is unusual for the Coen brothers). So far it reads well enough and I'm enjoying it...
~~~
Anyone else? Recommendations? Favorites? Experiences?
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