What are your six favourite fiction books (or authors) ?

Started by vandermolen, April 05, 2008, 10:09:27 AM

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J.Z. Herrenberg

#80
April 06, 2008, 11:01:10 PM
Quote from: Brian on April 06, 2008, 10:32:30 PM
Unfortunately, there's not much else by him at all. :( I think there is another novel (I want to say 'Neon Bible'...?) which he wrote when he was a teenager, and perhaps some unpublished stories, but that's it. Confederacy of Dunces was printed only after his death when his mom started calling English professors telling them her son at written a classic novel, and would they please help her publish it. Eventually Walker Percy said he'd read it and let her know what he thought, fell in love, and spread the word. It's a sad story all in all - a great talent who died too young and never got to see anything like success. But, as classical music fans, we're familiar with that tune...

I read (and enjoyed) this novel when it was first published. It's been a long time, but I remember its protagonist very well - the hugely overweight Ignatius J. Reilly, disturber of the peace...

Six authors are too few. I like Wodehouse, and Dickens, and Shakespeare, and Pynchon, and Nabokov, too!
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Florestan

#81
April 06, 2008, 11:36:37 PM
Today's lists.

No. 1 (hard)

Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim, Nostromo
Hermann Hesse - Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game
Thomas Mann - Doktor Faustus, Lotte in Weimar
Mikhail Bulgakov - The White Guard
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in Times of Cholera, The General in His Labyrinth
Mario Vargas Llosa - The Paradise Around the Corner, The War of the End of the World

No. 2 (soft)

Juan Marse - El embrujo de Shanghai (The Spell of Shanghai)
Arturo Perez-Reverte - The Spherical Map
David Lodge - Nice Work!, Paradise News
Mika Waltari - The Dark Angel
Umberto Eco - The Island of the Day Before
Alvaro Mutis - The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll

No. 3 (mixed)

Amin Maalouf - Samarkand
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood
Alessandro Barrico - Ocean Sea, Silk
Andre Malraux - Man's Hope
Gabriele D'Annunzio - The Fire
Giuseppe Tommasi di Lampedusa - The Leopard

(I deliberately limited myself to 20th and 21st centuries)





"Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part. ." — Claude Debussy

val

#82
April 07, 2008, 01:10:29 AM
Thomas Mann: Zauberberg

Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita

Garcia Marquez: Cien Años de Soledad

Samuel Beckett:  Molloy

Melville: Moby Dick

Ernesto Sabato:  Sobre heroes y tumbas

lisa needs braces

#83
April 07, 2008, 01:26:17 AM
Quote from: vandermolen on April 05, 2008, 10:09:27 AM
Dickens:David Copperfield

I'm reading this know and taking my sweet time! Yesterday I read the chapter "A Greater Loss." What a shocker that development was!

MN Dave

#84
April 07, 2008, 05:05:57 AM
Quote from: Bogey on April 06, 2008, 07:19:08 PM
Keemun and Dave, FWIW the Stanley Hotel is only an hour or so up the road from my house.  Our book club is considering reading The Shining and then meeting there to discuss it.  Here is a special tour that may interest both of you should you head out my way. 

http://www.stanleyhotel.com/tours.html

How cool is that? Don't spook yourselves. ;)

ChamberNut

#85
April 07, 2008, 05:28:14 AM
Quote from: Bogey on April 06, 2008, 07:19:08 PM
Keemun and Dave, FWIW the Stanley Hotel is only an hour or so up the road from my house.  Our book club is considering reading The Shining and then meeting there to discuss it.  Here is a special tour that may interest both of you should you head out my way. 

http://www.stanleyhotel.com/tours.html

Awesome!  :D

Hey, check out my avatar.  My favorite scene from The Shining.

Keemun

#86
April 07, 2008, 05:58:39 AM
Quote from: Bogey on April 06, 2008, 07:19:08 PM
Keemun and Dave, FWIW the Stanley Hotel is only an hour or so up the road from my house.  Our book club is considering reading The Shining and then meeting there to discuss it.  Here is a special tour that may interest both of you should you head out my way. 

http://www.stanleyhotel.com/tours.html

That looks cool.  8)
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. - Ludwig van Beethoven

Bogey

#87
April 07, 2008, 02:06:42 PM
Quote from: ChamberNut on April 07, 2008, 05:28:14 AM
Awesome!  :D

Hey, check out my avatar.  My favorite scene from The Shining.

Excellent!
There will never be another era like the Golden Age of Hollywood.  We didn't know how to blow up buildings then so we had no choice but to tell great stories with great characters.-Ben Mankiewicz

Haffner

#88
April 07, 2008, 02:29:42 PM
Quote from: ChamberNut on April 07, 2008, 05:28:14 AM
Awesome!  :D

Hey, check out my avatar.  My favorite scene from The Shining.


The tension is really portrayed well all over the movie; one of my favorites ever. Hoping there's a double-dvd with 5.1 surround out there.

DavidRoss

#89
April 07, 2008, 04:29:28 PM
Quote from: knight on April 06, 2008, 03:00:56 PM
"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

Who can resist the classic, attention grabbing, opening line to Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess.
A splendid read--It was one of the first dozen or two to spring to mind, along with Ellison's Invisible Man, Morrison's Song of Solomon, and Stone's A Hall of Mirrors--fine company, indeed, for the under-rated Burgess.
"Maybe the problem most of you have ... is that you're not listening to Barbirolli." ~Sarge

"The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." ~Margaret Thatcher

vandermolen

#90
April 07, 2008, 04:50:35 PM
Quote from: -abe- on April 07, 2008, 01:26:17 AM
I'm reading this know and taking my sweet time! Yesterday I read the chapter "A Greater Loss." What a shocker that development was!

Too long ago since I read it to remember this chapter but I hope that you enjoy it.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Solitary Wanderer

#91
April 08, 2008, 05:09:38 PM
Well, I read nothing but Sci-fi/Fantasy for many years in my late teens/early 20s.

Racking my brains...

Arthur C.Clarke ~ I loved all of his books but especially the Rama trilogy sequel.

Ben Bova ~ Mars

Tolkien ~ Hobbit/LotR

Larry Niven ~ Ringworld

Harry Harrison ~ Loved his writing especially the Stainless Steel Rat series.

Michael Moorcock ~ Some great writing here too. My fave was The Warhound and the Worlds Pain.

And many others...   
'I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.' ~ Emily Bronte

J.Z. Herrenberg

#92
April 08, 2008, 11:14:39 PM
Just a question: does anyone know the very stylish and poetic fantasy stories of Clark Ashton Smith? He is one of the 'Three Musketeers' of the magazine Weird Tales. The others are H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (of Conan fame).
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

vandermolen

#93
April 08, 2008, 11:42:45 PM Last Edit: April 08, 2008, 11:44:58 PM by vandermolen
Also: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson  0:)/ >:D
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

MN Dave

#94
April 09, 2008, 04:21:33 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on April 08, 2008, 11:14:39 PM
Just a question: does anyone know the very stylish and poetic fantasy stories of Clark Ashton Smith? He is one of the 'Three Musketeers' of the magazine Weird Tales. The others are H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (of Conan fame).

Yes.

Christo

#95
April 09, 2008, 06:12:13 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on April 08, 2008, 11:14:39 PM
Just a question: does anyone know the very stylish and poetic fantasy stories of Clark Ashton Smith? He is one of the 'Three Musketeers' of the magazine Weird Tales. The others are H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (of Conan fame).

No.
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

Christo

#97
April 09, 2008, 06:17:39 AM
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

J.Z. Herrenberg

#98
April 09, 2008, 06:18:39 AM
Quote from: MN Dave on April 09, 2008, 06:15:32 AM
http://www.eldritchdark.com/

That's the site to go to - his poetry is there (which I have problems with), but also his stories. The story cycles about Zothique and Hyperborea are very good and can even be enjoyed for their style alone (which I still regularly do).
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

MN Dave

#99
April 09, 2008, 06:21:38 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on April 09, 2008, 06:18:39 AM
That's the site to go to - his poetry is there (which I have problems with), but also his stories. The story cycles about Zothique and Hyperborea are very good and can even be enjoyed for their style alone (which I still regularly do).

I'll have to revisit him. I have a fat book put out by Fantasy Masterworks of many of his...works. :)
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